Jerry Shaw (Shia LaBeouf) and Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan) should never have met. He’s a relative loser and reprobate living in the shadow of a highly successful twin forced to deal with the beloved brother’s tragic death. She’s a single mother who just put her only child on a train for Washington, DC to play a concert at the Kennedy Center.

Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan in DreamWorks' Eagle Eye

Strangers with nothing in common, both are suddenly thrust together after a mysterious phone call sends their lives spiraling out of control. Framed as terrorists, chased by a dogged FBI agent (Billy Bob Thornton) and in intrepid Air Force investigator (Rosario Dawson), the two are engaged by the feminine voice in a series of increasingly dangerous tasks.

But to what end? That’s the mystery the two of them, as well as the investigators hot on their tails, have to solve. And if they can’t? Not only will their lives be in jeopardy, but so might be the United States of America, the conspiracy sending them down this nefarious rabbit hole more far-reaching and dangerous than any they could ever have imagined.

I admit right off the top that, for a good hour or so, I was having a blast watching the new political action/thriller Eagle Eye. Lithe, quickly paced, full of energy, creatively constructed and with some seriously sensational whiz-bang, this big budget B-movie re-teaming the director (D.J. Caruso) and star (LaBeouf) of Disturbia is, for a while there at least, one heck of a lot of fun.

What I can only describe as the inevitable happens and the movie, doesn’t just fall over the deep end, it does back flips and summersaults all the way down it into the rocky depths below. While never the sharpest tool in the woodshed to begin with, the screenplay (credited to four different writers) gets increasingly juvenile and frustratingly dumb the further along things get, all of it culminating in a series of events far too assulatingly stupid for me to easily relate.

The simple fact is that what starts as fast and furiously entertaining potboiler easy to roll with suddenly becomes one of the more incredulously asinine and unintentionally silly disasters I’ve seen all year. At a certain point when the HAL-9000 sci-fi lunacy starts spiraling out of control the movie can’t help but fall apart in grotesquely idiotic fireballs of cliché, corniness and implausibility so extreme that any chance to suspend one’s disbelief and roll with the punches becomes borderline impossible.

But, like I already said, for a while there this one had me by the throat eager to see what outrageous stunt Caruso and company where going to pull off next. This Enemy of the State meets Marathon Man meets Stealth concoction flashes some fantastic set pieces, a stunning car chase through a crane-infested junkyard full of flying cars and creepy visuals just one of series of escapes so good even Jason Bourne would come away impressed.

The problem is, as nice as these moments are (and as hard as the performers all gallantly try) there just isn’t any reason to stick with this one all the way through to the finish. The third act becomes a series of mind-blowing idiocies so far-fetched and unbelievable all you can really do is sit back and laugh. This film doesn’t just waste its early promise; it destroys it with a cacophony of screeching tires, bullet fire, massive explosions and supercilious slow motion.  

In other words, the whole thing ends up being a calamitous waste of time. Any movie that spends its early moments deliciously getting my hopes up only to sabotage them at seemingly every pointless twist and turn deserves its own little place in the cinematic hall of shame and Eagle Eye is just that very motion picture. Don’t let the intriguing synopsis and the well-cut trailers fool you, this one’s a dog, its seductive bark masking a poisonous bite oozing in nothing less than deadly frustrating disappointment.

Film Rating: êê (out of 4) 

Additional Links:

-  Eagle Eye Theatrical Trailer