Eagle Eye 2008

Amy Nicholson, Boxoffice Magazine: You can't help thinking that if Hitchcock were inspired by today's privacy meltdown, he'd need only a quarter of the explosions to leave us shattered. Read more

Ben Lyons, At the Movies: An intelligent nail biter. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: For all its digitally effected chaos, the cinematic threat level in Eagle Eye never even comes close to orange. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: Caruso and Spielberg probably thought they were reviving the paranoid style of 70s political thrillers, but their story is so implausible it barely provokes a tremor. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: The chase eventually wears thin, and Eagle Eye eventually strangles its actors in the threads of its plot. Read more

Ruth Hessey, MovieTime, ABC Radio National: It's a tad long, and it doesn't always add up, but the action sequences are pretty visceral and genuinely exciting. Read more

Nathan Rabin, AV Club: Eagle Eye should boast all sorts of contemporary resonance. But it'd probably feel just a little bit timelier and more relevant if it took place in a universe that bore even the faintest resemblance to our own. Read more

Randy Cordova, Arizona Republic: Manages to be both ominous and fun, making this a popcorn thriller with an edge. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: [Hitchcock] for a modern age bloated by steroids, addled by action, and incapable of long-term attention. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: Die Hard meets The Fugitive meets 2001: A Space Odyssey in the fully paranoid Eagle Eye, a frantic thriller that's nowhere near as good as its influences but still manages to get the job done. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: So hysterical in its terrorist subplot and its seizure-inducing action sequences that a pummeled viewer can be excused for texting WTF? to a friend in the middle of the chaos. Read more

Christine Champ, Film.com: A warning about the threat in our own backyard -- but as often is the case with Hollywood blockbusters, the warning comes across more like fear-mongering than constructive social criticism. Personally, I prefer my cinema sans mongering. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: With less expensive actors, it might just have been called Chase Movie, and played for laughs. Read more

Tom Maurstad, Dallas Morning News: Forget suspending disbelief; you would have to suspend consciousness to go along with this story. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: Check your credulity at the door, and you'll at least enjoy some high-impact action scenes. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Eagle Eye is big, loud and expensive, but it's not particularly entertaining. Read more

Bob Mondello, NPR.org: It means to say something about anti-terrorism surveillance and civil liberties, but if you asked me what Eagle Eye is about, I'd have to say it's about as dumb as can be. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: Finally, an action-adventure thriller that feels as if it were created, directed and acted, soup to nuts, by a computer program. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: There are lots of new wrinkles to ponder about American surveillance, but it seems that all the writers have surveilled is HBO. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: The fever-pitch paranoia of this terrorist thriller, the seizure-inducing editing, the dense layers slapped on a fairly simple plot all point to a kind of overkill that only Hollywood money can buy. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Eagle Eye wants to be Marathon Man, or Enemy of the State, only with a post-9/11 overlay and a plot device lifted straight from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Should this film be a huge box office success, it will stand as a sad testament to how low the bar for cinematic entertainment has been set. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: The word 'preposterous' is too moderate to describe Eagle Eye. This film contains not a single plausible moment after the opening sequence, and that's borderline. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: At the very least, Eagle Eye gives us two principals who are appealing enough to keep us interested in them. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: The movie doesn't have three brain cells to rub together, but the premise carries it a long way. Read more

Josh Levin, Slate: Eagle Eye feels less like a vehicle for an action hero than the latest in a series of national focus groups to determine LaBeouf's commercial viability. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: The film is a rag bag of concepts and characters from earlier, vastly better movies. Read more

Calvin Wilson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: What's galling about Eagle Eye is that it could easily have been an entertaining film without constantly yielding to the impulse to blow stuff up. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: It all wears very thin by the third act, when The Voice really starts to grate and all remaining sense slams into a brick wall. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: Read more

Trevor Johnston, Time Out: But there's also a puppy-dog doesn't-know-any-better enthusiasm to this pacy fluff which means you can't get that worked up at it. Read more

Christopher Orr, The New Republic: It might merit a B-minus in the silly popcorn movie category if it didn't unwisely decide, toward the end, that it wasn't willing to be just a silly popcorn movie. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Though it aspires to be an intriguing political cautionary tale, the movie is mostly about the feverish and jarringly choreographed chase scenes. Read more

Robert Koehler, Variety: The pic's first 35 minutes sizzle until a Byzantine plot nudges the story toward near-parody in the final act. Read more

Neely Tucker, Washington Post: Eagle Eye, with a more nuanced idea of paranoia and the ills of technology gone wild, could have been both entertaining and disturbing. Deafening isn't quite the same thing. Read more