Review of Eagle Eye (2008) by Dg J — 28 Nov 2010

The United States armed forces have a lead on a suspected terrorist in Baluchistan, but as the man is a recluse, getting a positive ID proves difficult, and the Department of Defense's computer system recommends that the mission be aborted. The Secretary of Defense (Michael Chiklis) agrees with the abort recommendation, but the President orders the mission be carried out anyway. This turns into a political backlash when all of the victims turn out to be civilians, and retaliatory suicide bombings target US citizens in response.

Jerry Shaw (Shia LaBeouf) is a Stanford University dropout who lacks direction and faces financial difficulty. He finds out that his more ambitious twin brother Ethan, an Air Force lieutenant with expertise in parallel algorithms and quantum electronics, is dead. Following the funeral in January 2009, he goes to withdraw some money from an ATM and is surprised to see that he has $750,000 in his account. When he returns home, he finds his apartment filled with a large number of weapons, explosives, and forged documents. He receives a phone call from an unknown woman who explains that the FBI will apprehend him in thirty seconds and that he must escape.

Not believing her, he is caught by the FBI and sent to an interrogation room where he meets Special Agent Tom Morgan (Billy Bob Thornton). When Morgan leaves the room to meet with Air Force Office of Special Investigations Special Agent Zoe Pérez (Rosario Dawson), the unknown woman arranges Jerry's escape over a phone by a crane which hits the building. Jerry escapes and the unknown woman has him join up with single mother Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan). The unknown woman is coercing Rachel into assisting Jerry by threatening to kill her son, Sam, a trumpet player on his way to Washington, D.C. by train from Chicago for a band recital.

The woman helps the pair to avoid the Chicago Police and FBI units, demonstrating the ability to remotely control virtually any networked device, such as traffic lights, cell phones, automated cranes, and even electrical wires. While Jerry and Rachel follow her instructions, the woman has other 'agents' (other people whom she has blackmailed) create a crystal explosive made into a necklace and its sound-based trigger placed inside Sam's trumpet. Jerry and Rachel are led from Chicago to Washington, D.C., via Kendall County, Indianapolis and Dayton, Ohio through various means. At one point when Jerry refuses to continue, they are directed to a Circuit City electronics store by the woman. Over several television screens she introduces herself to them: she is a top secret supercomputer, the same one seen in the beginning of the film, called "Autonomous Reconnaissance Intelligence Integration Analyst" (ARIIA) (voiced by Julianne Moore) and tasked with gathering intelligence from all over the world.