Metacritic on Eagle Eye - 43
Rotten Tomatoes on Eagle Eye - 26
ROYGB Five Star Rating Movie Review System
Either site you go to, those numbers say P.U. and I have to agree. At the end of the movie, some character says the name "Eagle Eye" but it sounds like "evil eye," which you all know is synonymous with "stink eye." My own score (for criteria, see my 9/18/08 post) amounts to a whopping one and a half stars. No believability, no character arcs, plus no good lines equals no red star. Alternating between light and dark settings earns an orange star but stock footage in every establishing shot cancels that out. Cars flipping over earn an orange star, but a car chase full of close-up shots cancels that out. We'll settle for half an orange star. I didn't know Rosario Dawson was starring until ten minutes in. She and Billy Bob should have left this one-dimensional (no yellow star) material to the ugly, freckly son of Michelle Monaghan's character. A green star goes to some really, fast editing (one person finishes the other's profanity) and somewhat cool satellite CGI/grid mapping. However, half that green star goes away due to the annoying, loud whistle everytime an act of "cyberterrorism" is performed. I almost regret giving half a blue star for a single song which plays at the beginning (by Airborne Toxic Event), because the preachy speech at the end is overemphasized with some stock patriotic music that hopefully gets drowned out by groaning audiences. As far as rewatchability (that rare purple star) is concerned, you've already seen it before you even begin. Watching Eagle Eye for the first time is almost like rewatching Live Free or Die Hard, as most of the concepts are repeated (alas, without Bruce Willis), SO, nothing worth seeing again for the third time.
SPOILERS ALERT! Have you ever wondered where your airport baggage goes after you check it? I have, so the most thrilling scene in the movie is a chase that takes place on those conveyor belts as the main characters try to stowaway on a plane. The least thrilling scene surprisingly is NOT the cheesy "liberty" speech at the end. It actually takes place halfway through, and is a product plug for Circuit City. You know those scenes at the end of every James Bond movie, where the villain explains every last detail of his evil scheme, thus giving the hero a chance to escape and defeat him? Yeah, there's one of those, although this time the villain is artificial intelligence gone rogue, and "she" taps into every networked, electronic device in the country (unbelievably calling every person on a subway train at the same time - AND THEY ALL PICK UP; remote controlling a (mechanical?) junkyard crane; and creating the exact surge necessary to snap a power line). Rather than kill Shia Lebouf's character when he gives up like "she" does every other character who stops doing "her" dirty work, this impossible A.I. reveals the "whole truth" to him (including his childhood home video footage which I doubt would be accessible). Remember all the reasoning that they tried to do with the computer in the movie WarGames? There's a lot of that here, but this time they've upped the ante by allowing the computer to INTERPRET THE CONSTITUTION. It's worse than a high school class on U.S. government. If you're wondering why I paid to see this awful movie when its awfulness was foretold by the websites mentioned above, it's because I knew it would give me plenty of material to work with and besides, it had Spielberg's name on it so I had to see for myself. Fair enough? I can credit it for encouraging me to learn Morse code and to seriously consider the possibility of terrorists forcing innocent people to become terrorists themselves. Could YOU hijack an armored truck (without killing anyone) if it meant saving your family?
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