Review of Echelon Conspiracy (2009) by Patti D — 29 Nov 2012

Echelon Conspiracy.

Starring:

Shane West, Ed Burns, Ving Rhames, Martin Sheen.

Genre: Action/Thriller.

Rated: PG-13.

American IT engineer Max Peterson (Shane West) receives a mystery package with a phone in it. This phone gives him text messages that not only save his life but offer him easy money as well.

After finishing a job in Thailand, Max goes to Prague on the advice of the text messages. Max is given specific text messages on what slots to play and when to bet big. This leads to excessive winning that puts him on the radar of former FBI agent now head of Casino security John Reed (Ed Burns). He is quickly picked up by Agent Grant (Ving Rhames) and finds out he is in a worldwide government conspiracy. That has something to do with the NSA and their Echelon computer which is wired in to the world?s video cameras and communication devices.

I was curious how there was not much marketing on this film but what I did see I liked. Echelon is a mixture of Eagle Eye and the Bourne Identity however the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. It has some style courtesy of the Jason Bourne editing techniques that have become popular as of late, and the story starts off rather intriguing with the government?s ability to use technology to monitor everyone. Unfortunately this is the type of movie where after you watch it you see how they tried to tie everything together but there are just too many holes in the plot for it to work.

Spoiler alert: The ending of this movie is ridiculous, Max has to convince Echelon that it?s in the American people?s interest for it not to exist, I actually was waiting for Max to play tic-tac-toe with Echelon ala WarGames. The main issue with the ending is that the computers prime directive is to protect the American people; if that is the case why does the computer kill 4 people, take the financial records of all Americans and allow a plane to crash? Nor does it explain why the computer makes text message threats to kill people in contact with the phone. When you think about everything that goes on in the movie and how this computer did it all to protect Americans it will make you shake your head in disbelief.

Echelon will get lost in the shuffle at the theatre, It has the makings of a strait to DVD release and should have taken that route, that is where it will find its audience.