Case Study - Eagle Eye

Chris Ashwell

Eagle Eye – 2008

Plot:
It all starts when the US have possible leads on terrorist in the Middle East but the lastest technology called DoD says that the mission to track these down should be aborted, however the president disagrees and decides to carry out the mission. It turns out the suspects were civilians and as a response to this suicide attacks begin.
Jerry Shaw (Shia LaBeouf) attends his brothers funeral, his brother used to be in the Air Force. Afterwards he goes to withdraw money from the bank and he finds that he now has $750,000. When he gets back to his apartment he finds lot of different types of weapons in his apartment, consisting of bombs and guns. He gets a phone call from a woman telling him he needs to leave his apartment or the FBI will cuff him in 30 seconds.
He doesn’t believe this woman and as a result the FBI burst in and cuff him. He is taken to a interrogation room and meet Special Agent Thomas Morgan (Billy Bob Thornton). The unknown woman rings him again and gives him instructions on how to escape. As a consequence he meets Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan).
The woman on the phone carries on giving them instructions to avoid the Chicago Police and FBI, the woman has creates a crystal explosive made into a necklace that is worn in a meeting in the White House and its triggered by the woman’s son playing his trumpet.
The woman finally reveals herself and they find out that she is actually a super computer who has the ID of everyone all over the world. The supercomputer is actually corrupt and trying to kill the president but she says it in a different way so that the two characters think that they are helping to save the US.
The film progress’s and there are many different escape scenes from the police, and it’s only until near the end they find out that the computer is corrupt and they try not to give it away. They destroy the Supercomputer but its plans continue to take place without the actors knowing.
Rachel is given the explosive necklace by an official who was also instructed by Ariia and Rachel is sent to the Capitol to watch the President's speech. Sam's (son of Rachel) class, whose performance was in the Capitol for the President's State of the Union Address. They begin to play. The trigger that will set off the explosive necklace is set to activate when Sam plays a certain note on his trumpet. Jerry gains entry dressed as a Capitol policeman and he’s not sure what to do to stop the performance so he fires his pistol into the air, but then Jerry is then shot several times by a Secret Service agent.
In a hearing after the chaos Ariia caused, the Secretary of Defense urges that another supercomputer should not be built: "sometimes the very measures we put into place to safeguard our liberty become threats to liberty itself," he cautions them. Ethan posthumously receives the Medal of Honor and Agent Morgan posthumously receives the Commendation Medal, while Jerry, injured but alive and well, receives the Congressional Gold Medal. The film ends with Jerry attending Sam's birthday party. Rachel thanks him for attending, which her ex-husband had never done, and kisses him on the cheek. She then tells Jerry that she's glad he's there. He then responds, "Me too", and the movie ends.


Audience:
I think this film appeals to a wide variety of people. I would say that it appeals to everyone but the younger people won’t be able to understand. This film is one that throws you off balance in all directions, it’s one that you watch and constantly have to work out what happening in order to understand so I would say the initial target audience for this film is 14- 40.
Quotes from IMBD.com
8*/10*
In the plot of Eagle Eye, there are elements taken from the books written by William Gibson, the video game Portal and movies like Enemy of the State, I Robot and a long etcetera. But, in spite of that, I had a very good time watching this movie. There's no doubt it's unoriginal but the movie has an enormous energy that takes possession of the spectator so the final experience is very entertaining. The action scenes are very well filmed : they are exciting and they feel realistic.The movie has a good tone because it never stops entertaining. The actors also did a good job. Shia LaBeouf, Michelle Monaghan, Billy Bob Thornton, Michael Chiklis and Rosario Dawson bring a lot of enthusiasm to their characters. I'm usually against the lack of originality but, there are some occasions in which, that fail is redeemed with a lot of good elements. Eagle Eye is one of that cases. I can easily recommend this movie. I had a very good time watching it and it did not bore me even a second.








This author is bang on target! A truly great film! The action scenes are shot extremely well but you can argue that Shia LaBeouf performs well in all the movies he plays particularly in Transformers his action shots are awesome. It really does take the aspect of a thriller film, keeps you on the edge of your seat and keeps you guessing throughout the whole film.
1*/10*
Terminator was good. but why do it again with "that guy from transformers" and poorly? i apologize for using blatantly simple, crude language to express this movie, but that is exactly what this movie is. it starts from what seems to be a interesting political thriller into yet another mediocre scifi about how technology will get out of our control, but with so many plot holes you end up feeling completely numb with all the running around and explosions happening. shia is the next ben affleck. the moment our b list stars are in circuit city and the computer reveals itself, i immediately thought "...are you serious?" i mean who wrote this script? In the end rosario dawson simply sticks a metal rod into the giant "eagle eye" that was just unsuspectingly dangling in front of her, and that stops the super intelligent AI completely.. i don't even want to get into why they didn't do something about that earlier. and the whole fiasco about putting the crystal on the lady and the sonic trigger in her son's trumpet.. whoever programmed Aria is retarded and whoever wrote this script is on the same level of IQ as the computer. only props go to billy bob thorton for killing himself, like he should do in every one of his movies.










I know this is my opinion but this author is completely wrong! The way he put it sounds like this film has been made on an extremely low budget and have employed cheap actors to create this fantastic film. Well he/she is wrong. Busy scenes have been executed with maximum smoothness and extreme care, this isn’t work of a 1* film!

Budget spent on this film was $80,000,000 now that’s a lot of money for a film that I hasn’t seen advertised anywhere but perhaps that was just me. The film managed to reach a total gross revenue worldwide of $178,066,569.
Now in my opinion I don’t think this film was marketed very well at all, I personally didn’t know this film was even out until my sister brought me the DVD and said you might like this. I was sold as soon as I saw Shia LaBeouf was the leading actor. Once I had seen the film I was so surprised I hadn’t seen it advertised anywhere, not even on TV.
Technological Advancements:
The film uses an even balance of animated scenes and real scenes but it does use a lot of explosions and collisions which to the standard they used must have cost a lot of money. The technology used to achieve these standards must have been the latest for 2008. Even the technology to ensure that everyone is safe when the stunts are happening e.g. wires. I reckon if this film had been released in 2009 and was put a year ahead the film would be very visually appealing. This film wasn’t produced in 3D and was produced like most other films.