Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here.
Okay, it’s been out for a few days now, so I feel comfortable writing an EAGLE EYE review that contains a few spoilers. If you still haven’t seen the film, just skip this review altogether, and just know that I thought it was passable entertainment that doesn’t quite hold together as a movie, and that some of the more overt sci-fi elements are a little too silly for me to give this a wholehearted recommendation.
But I think it’s almost impossible to discuss the film without detailing the plot elements that do or don’t work, and Paramount was verrrrrrrrry nervous about any spoilers appearing in any pre-release reviews, so I felt like the only way to write this piece was to wait until the film was out. That way, nobody gets uptight, and I’m able to fully articulate my reaction to the movie.
I was a little taken aback when I was talking with someone this weekend and they referred to DJ Caruso as “a big fat hackity hack.” Is that really what we’ve come to? You’re either an auteur or a hack? There’s no middle ground where professional, slick directors for hire can exist? I don’t think Caruso’s had a particularly personal filmography thus far, but I think his films are generally well-made, and there’s a subtle sense of style to the best of them. I quite liked THE SALTON SEA, and even hosted a screening of it at the American Cinematheque before it was released. TAKING LIVES and TWO FOR THE MONEY are best forgotten, but I don’t think it’s the directing that is the issue with either one of them. DISTURBIA is indeed a shameless rip from REAR WINDOW, but it’s done well, and the film entertains on its own merits. Now, with EAGLE EYE, Caruso’s taken a step into the territory normally reserved for guys like Michael Bay or Tony Scott, big hyperslick action movies with a heavy military bent, and I think he proves with his work here that he’s more than capable of handling this scale of filmmaking. Maybe if EAGLE EYE is a hit, we’ll start to see a more personal side of Caruso in his work, and maybe then it’ll be fair to judge him overall. Right now, I still think what we’re seeing is professionalism and style without much personality, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The film’s tortured plotting is the real problem here. The press notes describe the film as a “race against time thriller,” and that’s certainly true. The trouble is that the nature of the film’s villain is so powerful and omniscient that it makes the stakes impossible. It paints the characters into a corner that only convenience can rescue them from. Both Jerry Shaw (Shia LaBeouf) and Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan) are completely average people at the start of the film, drawn into these extraordinary circumstances for reasons that remain mysterious until late in the game. As a result, it’s hard to believe that they’d be able to muster the skill sets to survive the ordeal that they’re plunged into, especially since the film refuses to play fair. When you create a villain that can do anything, anytime, anywhere, without restriction, you rob your film of any real tension. It can’t just work one way. Yes, you have two very human, very fallible people as your heroes, but unless there’s a way for them to reverse the situation or turn the tables, it doesn’t work.
And now here’s where the spoilers come in. In the press notes, producer/rewriter Alex Kurtzman says, “Steven [Spielberg] always wanted people to walk out of the theaters and turn off their cell phones and BlackBerrys, because they were so scared.” Fat chance. They also make a comparison to JAWS, talking about the impact that film had on beachgoers. The reason that worked is because sharks are real, and there’s a primal fear hardwired into our nervous systems of being eaten by something larger than us. And while computers may be integral to our lives these days, they’re not inherently terrifying. And despite the insistence by the filmmakers that they’re telling a story grounded in reality, this film has as much to do with the realities of technology right now as LOGAN’S RUN does. More importantly, maybe it’s my own belief that human are smarter as a species than most people give them credit for, but I have a hard time believing we’re ever going to reach the tipping point that this film suggests. We’d have to be even stupider and more self-destructive than I think we are to hand over the kind of power to a computer that they show in this movie. I think that no matter how powerful our supercomputers get, it’s never going to reach a point where we remove the human factor completely from the equation, and for good reason. Kubrick warned us of this over thirty years ago, and even then, I’m not sure I bought it completely.
As an action film, this is firmly in the Michael Bay school of mayhem, but Caruso’s got an innate sense of geography that serves him well overall. He has to stage some huge sequences in the film, and he does a good job of keeping the audience oriented no matter how chaotic things get. The set pieces in the first half of the film remind me of that great footchase in MINORITY REPORT where Tom Cruise was on the run with the precog, and she kept telling what to do a few seconds before something happened. In that film, psychic powers were the leap you had to make to buy into the sequence, and it worked. Here, like I said, there are some huge leaps of faith that you’re asked to make, and I just don’t believe that any technology, no matter what, could account for all the impossible beats that occur. We are photographed hundreds of times a day when we’re in public, and there are certainly all sorts of datastreams being monitored by both our government and private concerns at all times, but the interconnectedness that is shown here just isn’t practical. There’s already so much paranoia in place in our society that the odds of anyone ever being able to pool all of this at once are nil.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe EAGLE EYE is prescient and ten years from now, it’ll be seen as a visionary thriller that warned us where we were going. But I’m willing to bet the opposite is true. I think eventually we’re going to see a push back in the other direction. When I read a website like BOING BOING and I see how much righteous anger is brewing out there regarding the way our rights and our privacy is being sold out every day, I think the right voices will eventually be heard, and we’re going to reclaim some of our personal space, some of our right to simply live without being under a constant microscope. If you take EAGLE EYE as a simple bit of fun, it works. The cast all gives it their best, with Billy Bob Thornton coming across the best and Rosario Dawson once again proving that she can bring even the driest material to life. LaBeouf gets a raw deal from fanboys, but he’s very good here. Playing Cary Grant’s innocent man to Caruso’s Hitchcock is not an easy gig, but Shia not only sells the confusion and horror of the situation, but also makes the eventual heroism seem like a real and viable choice. Monaghan’s got less to work with, but she sure is appealing. The screenplay credit is so twisted and knotted that it’s hard to know who to blame or credit, but that’s increasingly common on event movies like this.
One note: I had a chance to see the film at Fantastic Fest, but I opted to wait and see it in IMAX when I got back to Los Angeles instead. Glad I did. The last act of this film is fairly ludicrous in terms of staging, but the sets where the bad guy “lives” are gigantic and dazzling in terms of design. And to see them in IMAX, it’s like you’re actually in the room, surrounded by those mirrored globes. I understand there were a limited number of digital IMAX screens showing the film this week, and I plan to get a look at digital IMAX soon. I love how the name IMAX is rapidly filling a niche that used to belong to THX, a guarantee that you’re going to have a certain quality of experience each and every time. It’s not just the size... it’s the sound, and it’s the clarity, and it’s the way the seats are set up so no one’s ever in your eyeline. I just plain prefer this to any other mainstream theatrical presentation. The Alamo Drafthouse doesn’t count, since that’s a whole other type of experience. Shit, if Tim League ever got his hands on an IMAX theater, I would probably die of joy.
Overall, I doubt anyone’s going to be talking about this one a year from now, but it’s a pleasant couple of hours if you’re in the mood for a technothriller. Hopefully it does well enough that Caruso’s set loose on Y THE LAST MAN, easily the best material he’s ever been attached to as a director. That could be his defining moment as a director, and based on the way he’s grown from film to film so far, I have a feeling he’s going to finally assert the personality that’s been missing from most of his films so far.
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
