subject: A Different Movie Review - Eagle Eye Needs A Vision Check [print this page] The recent Shia LaBeouf flick, Eagle Eye, has been something of a batter, although it's charting a somewhat sluggish route to the $100 million mark so as to would certify it (and its star) as such. It debuted exactly a month in the past as this study is being on paper, has earned almost $90 million locally and has revealed viewers, reviewers and studio bean-counters alike so as to nearby is quite of life missing in the B-movie formula.
The story itself is nothing recent, building as it does on the most up-to-date strains of paranoia coursing through Western societies. The following short-lived synopsis is all you need to know going on for the story arc (all three degrees of it) in this show: LaBeouf's character, Jerry, gets an keep informed of the therapy so as to spirit Smith's lawyer character got in 1998's Enemy of the State, sense Jerry's being tracked by satellites, his cell phone is snitching on him and each electronic device on earth has been hard-pressed into service versus him.
Pawns a-plenty
Jerry is thrown collected with a new pawn, Michelle Monaghan's Rachel, which puts him in a soccer-mom car used for various chases and crashes and the obligatory smoke and mirrors. Director D.J. Caruso, who directed LaBeouf in preceding year's Disturbia, has been accused by various reviewers of having a Michael Bay thorny (Bay directed Bad Boys, precious thing Harbor, Bad Boys II, Armageddon and Transformers). True sufficient, nearby were Bay-like amounts of clanging killing, explosions, high-speed skeedaddling and soaring ammunition. Some chi-chi, academic critics contain called Bay a huge director - of prearranged designers. Caruso's show looks polite, too. It now doesn't tell somebody to much intellect.
You know, we be supposed to no more than call something a "spoiler" if, in statement, the in sequence revealed really would spoil the show used for you. This show by no means even makes a credible hazard by unevenness, so it can't really be disfigured. Still, in box you really like to envision this flick, ban analysis at the present: Spoilers prematurely. Lots of them.
Both Enemy of the State and Eagle Eye trade on the bizarre mixture - of urban myth, summit machinery and worldwide following intrigue - so as to fuels the most up-to-date, all-encompassing myths of totalitarian computers. And that's come again? We bargain given away going on for so as to unflappable female voice development done the phones in this show: It belongs to a workstation. See, this workstation sure so as to the evil, unregenerate "chain of command" - in the U.S., not so as to huge bunch of classless nation-builders in tableware and Russia - had to be destroyed. So, using each spot and byte of its 2000-IQ silicon brain, the workstation enlists the help of customer service reps, single moms and other "regular Jacks and Jills" who can beat up pallid House security officers and outthink FBI agents. Uh-huh. Right.
The suspension of disbelief obligatory to have the benefit of this show is too much used for too long. Notwithstanding the inane notion of Jerry, LaBeouf's slacker character, outsmarting black ops personnel and smack around both cops and robbers, the sum total picture of summit tech so as to this show presents is absurd. The sense so as to videotape security systems are so common, so ubiquitously installed and so definitely controlled from lone, central source is similarly unbelievable. Real-world experience in the area of videotape surveillance is not top secret or otherwise restricted, and the sum total humanity can determine used for itself the triumph of large-scale employment of surveillance cameras in both London and other cities.
Real-world interested
In vogue London, writes Colby Cosh of Canada's National Post, "It's come again? Skeptics contain supposed all along, and at the present it's authorized: Cameras don't catch crooks." Reporting on a association so as to took place in London in May of this time, Cosh quotation marks Detective Chief Inspector Mike Neville, head of the Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office of Scotland Yard, as proverb so as to the city's test with closed-circuit box surveillance cameras (CCTV) has been "a fiasco."
Right on the heels of so as to article, a disk of Muslim doctors - okay, doctors, the ones who guarantee "first, prepare nix damage," by smallest amount on this segment of the pond - was wedged planning mayhem and murder of various infidel Brits. CCTV did not catch the perpetrators. They missing various cellphones in the cars they had twisted into mobile bombs and the regulate "rang them up," as they say done nearby, and broken them, as we say done at this time.
"Perhaps so as to explains," muses theNew York Times, "why this plot has not prearranged rancid a new encircling of calls used for increased videotape surveillance in Britain. Or maybe it now shows so as to in the manner of a decade of whirling this society into a kind of round-the-clock, communal homewards show, little is missing outside the camera's eye." Whichever of these guesses is firm, it doesn't say a sum total plight going on for British backbone. It is strict to believe so as to John Locke, David Hume and Adam Smith came given away of so as to milieu.
Americans, used for the as a rule part, don't know who John Locke is. Neither prepare they know so as to London has going on for one-fifth of all operating CCTV cameras in the humanity, or so as to the government is expanding the installation of speakers with individuals spycams. Now, as they're taking your picture biting your nails, they can bawl by you, "Remove your fingers or we will fling a constable!" Video security so as to helps you with your delicate hygiene - at the present there's a Big Brother move the American following elite can really prevail on behind.
Does this show mean whatever thing?
Frankly, nearby is still various left behind resistance to authority amid Americans, and it can take a spot longer (or a new 9/11-level incident) used for many Americans to roll done and sport uninteresting used for government surveillance on a 24/7 basis. What end does a show like Eagle Eye sport in this sum total, bulky, simmering vat of controversy? Again, like the script itself, the message is muddled, and can be spun each which way.
There is, however, lone overriding intellect going on for the back and third tiers of relatives the show introduces us to, mostly cops and FBI agents and armed. Sure, the workstation can be acting up, but they pretty much like all this huge gear, and they all tell somebody to it seem as bloodcurdling or threatening as a Nintendo GameBoy or iPhone. There's nix trouble with the machinery, it's the incorrect relatives (or incorrect totalitarian computer) using it. There's nix trouble with power, you now need better relatives with their fingers on the nuke buttons. And maybe an "off" switch used for the workstation in box it comes down with a Caligula thorny and tries to take done the humanity (again).
The argument done state power - present the greatest men a plight of it, restrain the nastiest impulses of man by restricting it - has moved out on used for thousands of years. But at this time the question is not treated respectfully - or slightly kind of "fully." D.J. And Shia contain teamed up to bring into being a trivial, fast-paced, no-cogitation-required popcorn flick so as to doesn't respect the subjects it brings up sufficient to deal with them honestly or maturely. It's a comic reserve of a show, which is heartrending, since the area of interest and story line obtainable quite of opportunities used for real insight, even various controversy. There will be various dramatic resident debates in the yet to come, going on for now how far videotape surveillance be supposed to move out in the U.S., going on for limits on civic and reserved videotape security measures and come again? Kind of overseeing is obligatory to keep government spies in check (both carbon- and silicon-based).
Unfortunately, Eagle Eye will add nothing to the conversation. Rather than menace slightly earliest statement going on for the proliferation of surveillance cameras or the intrusion of government and computers into our lives, it chooses to blow up a new car or exhibition our out-of-shape, 20-something slacker of a hero beating qualified agents in hand-to-hand combat. The height of unreality, lone might say. Too bad the show didn't take a shot by dealing with the authenticity of videotape surveillance by the world's governments. Perhaps we be supposed to hold your horses used for the sequel.
