Eagle Eye

Shia LaBeouf discovers that the Republicans have control of the House.

(2008) Action Thriller (DreamWorks) Shia LaBeouf, Michelle Monaghan, Billy Bob Thornton, Rosario Dawson, Michael Chiklis, Anthony Mackie, Ethan Embry, Anthony Azizi, Bill Smitrovich, William Sadler. Directed by D.J. Caruso

George Orwell, a writer in the 1930s, predicted a society in which a somewhat fascistic government has complete knowledge of your activities and observes you via cameras placed everywhere. In this society, the rights of the individual have become secondary to the rights of the state, and the “Big Brother” figure, meant to be reassuring and friendly, becomes sinister and twisted.

Does any of that sound familiar? Our society has used defense against terrorism as an excuse to invade our privacy in every conceivable way. Our phone calls are monitored without our knowledge. Our internet usage is monitored without our knowledge. Our credit cards and bank accounts are monitored without our knowledge. I wouldn’t be surprised if our bowel movements are also being monitored. If that all sounds a bit paranoid, it’s probably from watching too many movies like this one.

Jerry Shaw (LaBeouf) is a slacker who works in a copy store (one not unlike Kinko’s) and lives hand to mouth. He’s far smarter than the job he does requires, but he seems to be pretty satisfied with underachieving. He then gets devastating news; his twin brother, a high ranking officer in the military, has passed away suddenly in an unusual accident.

Jerry goes home for the funeral where he and his father get into the same old argument; “When are you going to do something with your life? When are you going to be more like your brother?” Blah blah blah.  When Jerry gets home his empty bank account suddenly has three quarters of a million dollars in it. When he opens his apartment door, there are cases of weapons, explosives and enough stuff to blow up a whole chunk of city. He also gets a phone call from a mostly expressionless female voice informing him he needs to leave the apartment within ten seconds or be arrested by the F.B.I. Jerry is understandably overwhelmed and a bit skeptical…until ten seconds later when the F.B.I. barges into his apartment and arrests him.

He is being held as a terrorist by Agent Thomas Morgan (Thornton) in a cushy high rise which of course is what most F.B.I. offices seem to look like these days. In the meantime, Rachel Hollomon (Monaghan) sees off her son at the train station; he’s going with his elementary school band to play for the President in Washington D.C. She also gets a phone call from the same expressionless female voice that called Jerry, warning her that if she doesn’t follow instructions to the letter, her son’s train will be derailed. To prove that They can do it, the expressionless female voice shows live security cam pictures of her son on television sets in a nearby electronic store window (do electronic stores even have television sets in windows anymore?) so she does what she is told.

Back to Jerry. He receives another phone call from the expressionless female voice essentially telling him to duck. More of a believer this time, he does duck – particularly when he sees a giant crane arm hurtling towards the window. He is told to jump and with F.B.I. agents shooting at him, he jumps. Eventually he winds up on an elevated train – did I mention this was set in Chicago? Not that it matters. In any case, Jerry loses his cell phone so the expressionless female voice – or EFV as I’ll refer to it from here on in – calls him on someone else’s cell phone. Or, shall I be more accurate and say everyone else’s cell phone.

It becomes obvious that the EFV is the voice of an organization that has control of just about everything electronic, from traffic signals to cell phones to automated car crushers to satellites to power grids. That in itself is pretty impressive, but what does the EFV want, what part do nobodies like Jerry and Rachel play in the grand scheme of things and when is the next car chase?

Those are the kinds of questions you’ll be asking yourself when you watch this movie. Director D.J. Caruso previously worked with LaBeouf on the much better Disturbia which was also much smaller in scope. Not that I mind bigger scope, by the way.

The problem here is not so much with the acting, although LaBeouf and Monaghan don’t get much time to do any; they’re far too busy hurtling from one action sequence to another at breakneck speeds. The problem here is that the writers kind of write themselves into a corner. They make the EFV so omnipresent, so powerful that you wonder why someone so smart and so in charge couldn’t just take much easier short cuts rather than running two bedraggled citizens ragged on a cross country chase.

The movie obviously owes a lot to some classic suspense movies, like The Man Who Knew Too Much and movies like War Games and Colossus: The Forbin Project (while I’m dancing around who is behind the EFV, most folks know by now who it is either from having seen the movie, reading about it or just reading this review). It feels a bit like a pastiche, although Caruso proves himself more than capable with action sequences. There are some pretty nifty ones here, particularly one that takes place in an airport baggage conveyer system, and near the end in the streets of Washington D.C.

Dawson enters the movie early on as a military intelligence officer investigating the death of Jerry’s twin. She stumbles on this whole mess by mistake and winds up making a nice foil to Thornton’s corn pone F.B.I. agent; the two bicker quite a bit from the movie and provide some much-needed comic relief.

The key to enjoying a movie like this one is understanding its limitations. This isn’t meant to be examined seriously or given much attention to its own internal logic. The fact is that Eagle Eye does what it means to do quite well. It’s a roller coaster, not a math quiz, and it’s meant to be enjoyed without thinking too much about it. Just put your hands in the air and let the ride take you where it will.

WHY RENT THIS: Some great action and wonderful stunts to be seen here. The movie raises some interesting questions about how safe are we with all the surveillance that goes on, and how easily that information can be abused.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: There is a bit of a preposterous factor, and LaBeouf and Monaghan do not make for the most compelling leads ever.

FAMILY VALUES: There is plenty of action and violence, as well as some choice words but nothing I would fret too much about.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The voice of the EFV a.k.a. Aria, the computer program which is heard over cell phones and in the underground bunker, was voiced by an uncredited Julianne Moore.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: The standard single disc DVD release has no features to speak of; on the 2-disc special DVD edition and the Blu-Ray, viewers are treated to a discussion between Caruso and his mentor, director John Badham whose War Games is obviously an inspiration for this (Caruso served as a second unit director on that film). There’s also an interesting but generic piece on the constitutionality of surveillance.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $178.1M on an $80M production budget; the movie made money.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

TOMORROW: Tokyo!

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Exit Through the Gift Shop

The mysterious Banksy.

(Producers Distribution Agency) Thierry Guetta, Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Rhys Ifans (voice), The Space Invader, Swoon, Cheez, Neckface, Coma. Directed by Banksy

Street art is a phenomenon that grew out of the tagging and graffiti movement. Some have described it as “guerilla art” and that might not be a bad tag for it. The practitioners operate under cover of night and ply their trade with spray cans, stickers and mosaic tiles, among other mediums.

Some see it as a valid form of self-expression; others see it as blatant vandalism. Needless to say, there is a polarizing element to the art form and that can’t be a bad thing. Art, after all, is supposed to invite discussion.

French expat Guetta lives in Los Angeles. He moved there in the late ‘80s, opening up a vintage clothing store that often had big stars browsing in it. He was known in the city for constantly filming everything on his video camera. On a visit to his native land, he hooked up with his cousin, who had a quirky hobby of his own; he liked to put mosaic tiles of space invader-like figures in public places. Calling himself The Space Invader for obvious reasons, he had become a leading member of the highly cliquish street art scene which kept their anonymity with an almost jealous zeal.

Thierry grew fascinated with this scene – the dangerous aspect of it (the adrenaline rush of avoiding cops and security guards) appealed to him. Through his cousin he was introduced to Fairey, who also based himself in L.A. and Guetta videotaped his street art. The feeling among the street artists was that their art was very transitory by nature; it wouldn’t last long before someone took it down. In order to document their art, they turned to Thierry who was only too happy to oblige.

Under the guise of making a documentary about the street art scene, Guetta was given access to almost all of the leading personalities in the street art scene – all save one, the most notorious one of all. In London, the name of Banksy is well-known, particularly for his images of mice doing odd things. Banksy’s art was bold, caustic and full of a biting wit, too clever by half you might say. He was known for strictly preserving his identity, working only with people he knew well. To this day, the general public and the authorities have not a clue who he is.

At last, through Shepard Fairey, Thierry and Banksy were introduced. Thierry was very much taken by the brash young Englishman and for his part Banksy grew to trust Thierry, allowing him to film in his inner sanctum. On a visit to Los Angeles, Banksy notoriously put a figure of a hooded and bound figure alongside the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride at Disneyland with Thierry filming the whole thing. However, while Thierry was arrested by Disney security, Banksy got away scot free.

However, with years and years of shooting street artists and thousands of hours of footage to winnow through, Thierry’s subjects were becoming restless waiting for the documentary to be made. Thierry knew he had to at last make the film he had never intended to make. Knowing nothing about editing, scoring or anything in fact about filmmaking other than pointing a camera at his subjects, Thierry set out to create his masterpiece.

With Banksy being the subject he most admired, he screened it for him first. Banksy was mortified; the documentary was just terrible. Banksy figured that he could do no worse, so he took the footage and gave Thierry the instructions to “go make some art and put together a show.”

This documentary is the result of Banksy’s efforts and it takes a total turn at this point. Thierry adopts the persona of Mr. Brainwash and decides to put together a major event show in Los Angeles, despite knowing nothing about art or installing a show. He does know a thing or two about self-promotion and manages to capture the attention of the L.A. Weekly who give him a cover story which whips up a frenzy among modern art collectors, despite the fact most of the work is really awful and lazy; Mr. Brainwash takes existing images from the Internet and spray paints eye-patches on them, or Marilyn Monroe wigs.

We see Banksy as a narrator, but his face is always obscured by a hood and his voice distorted electronically; he really is serious about maintaining his anonymity. He wisely turns this from a documentary on street art to one about Thierry who is one of those magnificent eccentrics who give life some flavor. In many ways, he’s more interesting than the artists he was documenting. For his part, Banksy feels at once chagrined and pleased at the creation of the Mr. Brainwash persona; the artwork is somewhat atrocious but at the same time Banksy seems to admire Thierry’s fearlessness.

One gets a feeling throughout this film that we’re being conned a little bit. For example, Thierry proclaims that he had erased all the Disney footage from his camera when he was being interrogated by the security guards, but we are shown footage of Banksy crossing the fence and placing the figure alongside the track, and the trains being stopped shortly afterwards.

If it is a con, it’s a fascinating one and I don’t personally mind being conned in that way. The movie has a wicked sense of humor and there is a slickness and slyness to it that is refreshing and charming in its way. It also makes tremendous use of a great and sadly underrated song – Richard Hawley’s “Tonight the Streets Are Ours.”

There is a lot of ego involved here, from Thierry to Banksy to the artists themselves who take the stance that art outweighs all else. That’s like a blogger saying the most important things in the world are blogs and I, for one, would never assert something that preposterous. It sure as heck ain’t brain surgery…but is it art? That’s for you to decide.

REASONS TO GO: While initially slated to be a documentary about street art, it morphed into something completely different.

REASONS TO STAY: There’s a whole lot of ego involved in this project and quite frankly I’m not sure if the viewer isn’t the butt of the joke.

FAMILY VALUES: Some fairly blue language and smoking. There is also a fine line between art and vandalism here and it should be noted that those who find the lifestyle alluring might not know the difference.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Fairey would later go on to design the Barack Obama “Hope” image that figured so prominently in his campaign.

HOME OR THEATER: Definitely more suited to home viewing than a big theater.

FINAL RATING: 7/10

TOMORROW: Afghan Star