We used to have bad guys to play the menacing "them" in the paranoid conspiracy thriller. Nazis. Reds. Rogue CIA operatives. Pod people. Corporate goons. Now we have technology.

It's everywhere in "Eagle Eye," a sometimes entertaining flick that makes a lot of noise but doesn't have much to say. The spy gear ranges from cellphones as tracking devices to menacing television displays.

The hapless target of this espionage is Jerry Shaw (Shia LaBeouf), the slacker twin brother of a talented military officer and the prodigal son of a well-to-do family. Shortly after his wunderkind brother dies in a car wreck, Jerry finds his bank account suddenly filled with $750,000. His cell rings, and a disembodied female voice tells him the FBI is going to kick in the door in a few seconds. "You've been activated," she tells him.

In New York, divorced mom Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan) is putting her trumpet-playing young son on a train to Washington for a school gig at the Kennedy Center. She gets the same call. All this is apparently in response to a high-tech U.S. military raid on the far side of the globe.

Director D.J. Caruso ("Disturbia") works hard to twist the paranoid-conspiracy-thriller motif. He brings in Billy Bob Thornton (who gets all the best lines) and Rosario Dawson as investigators who rely on good old human smarts to figure out what the heck is going on in the cyber-chase. But mainly Caruso is as much in love with moviemaking technology as the plot is with gadgets.

"Eagle Eye" seeks to disturb us with the notion that our paranoia is justified: A cellphone won't save you; it'll bring the bad guys to you! But its ideas are pedestrian, and reality gets lost.

"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.

-- Neely Tucker (Sept. 26, 2008)

Contains intense action, violence and language.