h-star-37468 You can see that some thought was put into the unusual premise and how it all could play out - but for some reason, instead of creating another movie as excellent as the matrix, it turned into 80% action and 20% actual plot.

LeonLouisRicci Not Big on Ideas, but its Central Thesis is certainly a Big Idea. So Big in Fact that it has become a Cliché of Modern Paranoia. With its Roots in many a Sci-Fi Books and Cinema. Here in the form of a Super Computer, the Thesis is Technology Run Amok. The Story is Told so many times because it is Compelling, Scary, and can be Found in the Headlines. Almost.This is a Big Budget, Over Baked, Simplified Version of said Events that is Light on Philosophy and Heavy-Handed on just about Everything Else. The Cast is Better than the Script that is Outrageously Over-Done on all levels. From the Get-Go Suspension of Disbelief has Trouble Taking Hold.But, No Worries. The Pace is Fast and Frantic, the SFX Outstanding, and the Screen is Frame-Filled with High-Tech, Explosions, Car Crashes, and Mayhem Beyond Belief. It Actually has the Opposite Effect of its Intent. It is made to make You Think, but it acts more like a Comatose Inducement. The Mind Numbs and Thinking is Optional, in Fact it is Not Recommended.Overall, it's Popcorn Paranoia. Worth a Watch for its Entertainment Value and Slick Production, made for Drones and the Dumbed Down, but Despite the Weight of this Glossy Thing, the Message somehow makes it Point. Again, just to Remind Us that the Implication of the Thesis is Not Going Away anytime soon.

Robert J. Maxwell An engaging premise. You know the little voice that gives you driving directions from your GPS in the car? "Turn left in two hundred yards." "Approaching destination." Well, imagine that the little voice controls all the electronically transmitted orders to automated devices. I know it sounds terrifying but it needn't be all that bad. In this flick, Shia LaBeouf is astounded when his ATM shows a deposit of three quarters of a million dollars and spews it out into his hands and all over the Chicago sidewalk.Naturally, the beneficence of the little voice is an illusion, because its ends are to enable terrorists to take over the world, or destroy a city, or force everyone to listen to twelve-tone music, or something. The design is to force LaBeouf and his accomplice, Michelle Monaghan, to see that the terrorists get hold of a new explosive, so powerful that a chunk the size of a pinhead will -- I don't know, do things that are just plain distasteful. It enlists LaBeouf and Monaghan by saying in a cheerful voice through whatever device is available -- a cell phone, a traffic sign -- things like, "You have four seconds to exit the car before your baby is decapitated." That's what I call an imaginative premise and great things could have been done with it. But great things aren't done with it. It deteriorates in a few minutes into another novating action movie. The first high speed car chase takes place twenty minutes into the film. It seems to last forever. Never in the history of civilization has there been so much destruction wrought upon cars. They don't merely bump into one another, as at an amusement park, but they roll over ten times and disintegrate into thin slabs of metal mixed with mechanical junk. Cars are squashed by masses of scrap iron. They're picked up by automated cranes and dropped into Lake Michigan. The writers must hate cars.The human characters have far more endurance. They're practically superhuman. LaBeouf leaps out of a ten-story window, bounces off a tin roof far below, and lands on an I-beam over the subway tracks, and there's not a bruise on him. He's not even out of breath. And when he and Monaghan fling themselves into a mass of polluted water, we see them the next morning, and they look better than you and I do the next morning. After the dunking, the splashing, the swimming, the crawling out onto the mud, the hauling of themselves up onto the dock, Monaghan's hair is perfectly groomed. Her false eyelashes have stayed with her loyally throughout the ordeal.I couldn't watch the whole mess. I mean, there's a limit. Whatever happened to good solid Hollywood movies? Where did it all go? (Sob.)

Dominic LeRose Going to the cinema for thrills is a wonderful experience. Too bad those who saw "Eagle Eye" were devastated to learn they walked into a film that relates more to a comedy than a thriller. Coming back after "Transformers," Shia LaBeouf is teamed with the lovely Michelle Monaghan to star in one of the stupidest, lousiest, and most unbelievably dumb action movies in recent years. Jerry and Rachel are two strangers thrown together by a mysterious phone call from a woman they have never met. Threatening their lives and family, she pushes Jerry and Rachel into a series of increasingly dangerous situations, using technology to track and control their every move. At what point to poor Rachel and Jerry contact people for help? No! Director D.J. Caruso forces them to do almost everything an unnormal human being would intend on acting on. With Billy Bob Thorton as the bad guy, a random plane crash, weak explosions and every piece of dialogue being shouted, it's no wonder "Eagle Eye" remains an unloved and uin fact hated piece of scum. The horror of the quality from every level of storytelling by visual means and written means cannot compare to anything in the 21st century so far. This is laugh out-loud awfulness like you've never seen before. The only thing going for "Eagle Eye" is its intriguing title.