A Confused Political Thriller

With the backdrop of the current presidential election and economic turmoil, an action-packed political thriller is just the sort of thing that should play well at the Box Office, and thusfar Eagle Eye has done quite well. The film, produced by Mr. Spielberg and starring Shia LaBeouf while scoring quite high in terms of vehicles destroyed, scored few points in regards to common sense and originality.

The beginning of the film was remarkably similar to the opening sequences of The Matrix, with some mysterious female voice leading our hero out of custody after initially being caught for something he really wasn't involved with. In some ways, the most notable feature of the movie was Shia LaBeouf's post Miami Vice facial hair - present on the main character as a sign of his general lack of proper socialization, and absent on his identical twin who of course is a prodigy and role model. This is not too far removed from the unbelievably tired Evil Twin cliche and dragged down credibility for the story from the moment it was introduced. It is fairly safe to say that we could predict our hero's redemption within the first ten minutes of the beginning of the picture.

And unfortunately, that's the pattern followed throughout most of the film - unoriginal cliches, both in dialog and in action. The nemesis of the film, Eagle Eye, can only be described as the love child of HAL and Skynet, but with a political agenda. Worse than though, I'm fairly certain that they used the exact same set for the sinister "Eagle Eye" computer room from Minority Report, the one where Tom Cruise did his touchscreen analysis while be able to look out the window down to where the "precogs" were floating around in a giant jacuzzi. (the fact both films were produced by Mr. Spielberg adds more credence to this possibility). So, we're not only getting the same worn themes, we have to view them on the same sets as well!

The most distressing part of the movie is its complete lack of common sense though. One would expect a super-intelligence, even one that is slightly deranged, to understand the basics of the political system it is so intently trying to manipulate. Late in the movie, Shia determines that the unseen force driving him through one car chase after another is a rogue computer (while watching clips on HD TVs at the local Circuit City). He makes the leap after the computer starts quoting from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, with a focus on "We the People," so naturally we assume that this populist message is coming from a computer?

To make a long and illogical story short, Shia figures out that the computer is a Hollywood Liberal type who thinks that the executive branch has overstepped its authority and has decided to eliminate the whole branch. But wait, the computer flip-flops (Eagle Eye ought to be one of our presidential candidates) and decides to blow up the executive branch while they are sitting with the entire legislative branch in Congress during the State of the Union Address. And then, get this, the liberal anti-establishment computer decides to designate the Secretary of Defense as the new president. Does anyone else find this a bit odd, the computer in its efforts to protect the people, blows up their legislature, keeps the office of the president and places the military in control?

I think we ought to have a requirement for anyone attempting to write political thrillers to attend at least one semester of a Junior High School level civics class so they have at least a rudimentary understanding of our political system.






Copyright 2008, Raving Reviews™