![]() ![]() ![]() She needs Jerry because his dead brother was a government agent, who bio-locked her controls after discovering her plot. She plans to kill the entire chain of command other than the Defense Secretary, by blowing up the State of the Union. This is what happens when you programme a computer with documents like the Constitution and Patriot Act – it notices all the contradictions. ARIIA was created for national defence and has concluded that – as the President ignored her advice about the strike, resulting in the suicide bombings – that regime change is the only solution to uphold the common defence. Her appearance and voice is almost grounds for a lawsuit from Valve. ARIIA is Skynet, Vicky and above all GLaDOS all rolled into one. ![]() It turns out the caller is actually the computer, ARIIA, that warned against the drone strike (shock) which explains why it was able to control everything to guide them to the Pentagon alive. The heart of the film – after all the chasing – is a conspiracy plot. Oh and a brief, random and totally unnecessary guilt-trip about being a bad mother because she was working and dared to take one night off rather than seeing her son play his trumpet. Monaghan has little to do other than worry for her son and be scared and pissed. He’s not a bad actor, but I’ve always felt he is a lot better suited for comedy roles (see Even Stevens, I, Robot). As the lead, Shia LaBeouf is competent, but nothing more. He is a screw-up, with no direction in life, mourning his more successful but loving brother. She is a single mother with a deadbeat ex-husband. The leads are the only ones who get any form of background or development, but are still largely bland. None of the main actors are especially bad, but the script never really bothers fleshing the characters out in any way that allows them to give meaningful performances. Other than that they are the usual movie experts at falling from large heights and surviving explosions. They do actually make a point of saying that the characters are not suddenly action heroes (she can’t drive very well, neither is an expert with a firearm) which is nice. They get a few scratches I guess, but in real life they would have got fucking killed, even with a magic robot lady guiding them. It’s the standard bulletproof hero cliché. What follows is a series of increasingly nonsensical action and chase scenes as Jerry and Rachel are guided away from Bill Bob Thornton and into the Pentagon. The unlikely pair ( The Bourne Identity anyone?) must work together to… whatever. He meets Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan) who is being blackmailed by the caller (threatening to kill her son) to help Jerry. He doesn’t believe her, is arrested by Billy Bob Thornton, but escapes after she engineers him a route out. Jerry goes home to find his apartment has been turned into that of America’s Dumbest Terrorist and a mysterious female caller (Julianne Moore) tells him he is about to be arrested by the FBI. Meanwhile Jerry Shaw’s (Shia LaBeouf) identical twin brother (you can see where this is going) is killed in a mysterious car accident. Sure enough, the strike kills civilians instead, encouraging the actual terrorists to launch a series of suicide bomb attacks in America. Their high-tech computer tells them the intelligence is wrong and the Defense Secretary (Michael Chilkis) tells the President to abort the drone strike, but he ignores the advice. I missed the first 20 minutes, but Wikipedia tells me they weren’t really vital to understanding it. You watch and think, ‘hey it could be worse, I could be the characters in this movie!’ It’s not a good movie, but the kind that you’d watch at 1:00 AM on TV after a hard day of realizing your life is insignificant. It is by-the-numbers, preposterous action schlock with a tacked on subtext about rights and liberties and the dangers of fighting terrorism. Naturally, this contains substantial spoilers about the film Eagle Eye, but as that is four years old and you probably don’t care anyway, whatever.Įagle Eye (2008). Futurama will not be sidelined, but, as with the Bill Oakley interview, I will sometimes post other things if I feel like it. Note: This is a trial piece I felt like writing during disc troubles. Because the German poster is far, far better than the American one ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |