Eagle Eye

This numbskull knock-off of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Enemy of the State has the unlikely effect of making Tony Scott look like Alfred Hitchcock.

Mind-mangling, emptily flash and completely logic-defying, it also goes to show that the name Steven Spielberg is not always enough.  

The plot - which was originated by the world's greatest living film director (who also executive produces) - has been fleshed out by a team of writers with DJ Caruso (Disturbia) in the director's chair.

It's supposed to be a cautionary tale of the omnipotence of electronic surveillance and the world-threatening dangers of artificially intelligent technology to be used as a nefarious tool for evil.

What it turns out like is a rambling, totally implausible thriller that leaves more questions unanswered than Paris Hilton sitting the Oxbridge Entrance Exam.

LaBeouf plays Jerry Shaw, a quick-thinking slacker who returns home one day to discover his decrepit apartment stuffed to the rafters with state-of-the-art weaponry  and a few bags of fertiliser thrown in for good measure. There's also $750,000 in his bank account that wasn't there before.

Before you can say Al-Qaeda, he's whisked off by government goons and told by FBI Agent Thomas Morgan (Thornton) that's he's top of the terror list. Allowed one call to a lawyer, he finds himself being instructed by a robotic woman, who sounds disconcertingly like Republican hopeful Sarah Palin, to follow her orders to the letter.

Across town, single mom Rachel Holloman (Monaghan) takes a similar call informing her that the train carrying her cute little boy will be derailed unless she does what she's told. To hammer the message home, TVs in a branch of McDonalds opposite show the little mite in his seat.

And so it goes. Jerry and Rachel reluctantly hook up and their journey into the unknown is signposted at regular intervals by talking sat-nav devices, PDA machines and even the electronic hoardings outside supermarkets. It makes absolutely no sense whatsover.

This invisible, undetectable technologically-savvy tyrant has already deleted a couple of unco-operative drones (one was scorched to death by severed power cables, the other died in a road smash after the traffic light sequence was altered) so why does it need Jerry and Rachel to do its dirty  work?

In fact, this departs reality almost immediately and spends most of the remaining running time hurtling round like a headless cyber chicken on Planet Babble.

One of the few positive things to be gleaned is that the fledgling romance ends happily, a sure indicator that - despite the unfortunate body count - computer dating does work.

Watch a clip from Eagle Eye below.

Tim Evans