Eagle Eye : BuzzGuide.com-The Best in Entertainment and Recreation

The story is about an aimless young college drop-out, Jerry Shaw (Shia LeBeouf "Transformers"), who's distanced himself from his family and isn’t even making enough to pay his rent, but his life suddenly becomes dangerous when his twin brother, who's in the military service, is found dead. Right after the funeral, Jerry finds his checking account full of money and his apartment stocked with hazardous chemicals. Minutes before he’s arrested for possession, he gets a phone call from a mysterious woman instructing him on how to get away. He doesn’t pay much attention to her at first, but has no choice but to follow her advice after he's arrested. And, the unidentified caller has given him a list of things he has to do if he doesn’t want to be killed.

He soon finds himself teamed up with another victim, Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan "Gone Baby Gone"), whose young son has been kidnapped and has been been threatened by the same mysterious voice. They are pushed into a series of increasingly dangerous situations. Their every move is being tracked and controlled while they still don't know what their mission is, but it seems to be somehow connected to Jerry's recently killed twin brother. Security agencies are also tracking and following them, led by Agent Tom Morgan (Billy Bob Thornton "Monster's Ball"). As the situation escalates, they find themselves to be pawns of a faceless enemy who seems to have limitless power to manipulate everything they do.

What follows is an exhaustive, nonstop race to comply with whatever the mysterious voice tells them to do. If they slow down, even for a moment, Rachel's son will die, and Jerry . . . well, it's never quite clear what he stands to lose. Obviously, he wants his freedom back, but becoming a terrorist, which is what it appears the voice wants him to do, doesn't seem the way to do it. Don't pay too much attention to motivation; director D. J. Caruso ("Disturbia") is not really interested in the story. He just wants you to hold you attention, which he does almost throughout.

Sadly, the film suffers from being too long and really not much more than a preposterously plotted terrorist thriller dressed up as a cautionary tale about surrendering your rights in the name of security; but the action and chase sequences are too much fun to dismiss completely. Too bad they tacked on a Hollywood ending, that, if they hadn't and just left it as dark as the rest of the movie, might have left a much better impression.