Leave it up to producer Steven Spielberg and director D.J. Caruso to concoct a science fiction tale set in the gray hallways of the National Security Agency (NSA). First, this isn't a date movie; it would be more appropriate for fans of shoot-em-ups and Discovery Military. Second, think they're watching? You're just paranoid. Most of the technology is blown way out of proportion.
What's intriguing about the movie is its sensitivity to currents of suspicion in American culture spawned by the increasing presence of surveillance. The movie begins with a predator drone killing numerous innocent civilians, modeled on the botched 2006 strike on al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri in Pakistan that left 18 civilians dead. Eagle Eye's commentary on "targeted kills" is as prescient as it is negative, begging the important question: who will be the next target?
Shia LaBeouf gives a dynamic performance as a Chicagoland slacker who finds himself caught in a web of espionage the day after his twin brother dies. He is accompanied by single mother Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan), whose freckle-faced son, Sam, is being dangled by the sinister, omnipotent entity known only as Eagle Eye.
At times, Eagle Eye seems like a version of the Matrix set in the War on Terror, so it also deserves the same critique: do we really have to know who is at the top? Can't
we leave something up to the audience's imagination? In any event, it's just sci-fi. Stop being paranoid.
