Movie Review: Eagle Eye

Let's not mince words. Eagle Eye is a crap movie. It's not well written, it's not well edited, and it's not well acted. HOWEVER, all that being said, a whole lot of crap gets smashed and blown up during the movie, so it's not boring.

There's nothing new or groundbreaking about Eagle Eye. It's a conglomeration of plot devices that have been used time and time again in other, better movies, and while they work here, they're not particularly well done. Imagine if you took the part of Die Hard 3 where the terrorist is sending John McLaine around on errand after errand by cell phone, and update it with a little dash of the part from the Matrix where Neo is being told what to do by Morpheus over the cell phone, and stretched it into a full movie. Bam! You have Eagle Eye.

The storyline was a little too much to bear as well. The mystery antagonists don't just control cameras and phones, they control EVERYTHING. To the point where they can turn on the cruise control of your car and steer you around town. Or to the point where they can cause a power line in the fields of Indiana to snap at a specific point and fly over at you, hitting you in the middle of said field, frying you alive. I get the whole suspension of disbelief thing, but really, Narnia was more believable than this crap.

I won't give away the ending, but let's just say that it ends up being one of the traditional movie bogeymen, and I was disappointed in that as well. Finally, the message of the movie (we are all so dependent upon electronic devices and an electronic lifestyle) was really overplayed and heavy handed, showing up in almost every line of dialogue and every scene. When the experienced cop lectured his young lackey on the benefits of how they used to put things on paper instead of PDAs... well... you get the point.

The only redeeming part of Eagle Eye that saved it from total suckage was the action. This movie is almost nonstop action. There are some sweet car chases, and lots of vehicles get smashed up pretty good. For that reason, I have to admit that Eagle Eye kept me entertained throughout its whole duration. You're not going to take away any meaningful messages, you're not going to see a masterpiece of editing and filmaking, but damnit, you're going to see people explode and burn. That was pretty cool, so I had to bump the score accordingly.


SCORING: I give Eagle Eye 2.5 Agent Smiths out of a possible 5.