'Eagle Eye': Zooming In on Too Many Explosions

The paranoid conspiracy thriller needs shadowy bad guys -- the all-knowing "they" and "them." "They" used to be the Nazis, then the Reds, and then rogue CIA operatives, or pod people, or 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. Based on an idea from executive producer Steven Spielberg (he was set to direct, but dropped out to do the latest "Indiana Jones"), we get cellphones as tracking devices, traffic signals gone haywire, menacing television displays that show your children are being followed, construction cranes gone crazy, someone listening in to your whispered conversations, street-corner LCD readouts that stop broadcasting the news to spell out your name and a do-it-or-else ultimatum.

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. Jerry dropped out of Stanford, bops around the globe and is now settling into playing poker in the back room of the copy store where he works and magnificently underachieves.

Shortly after his wunderkind brother dies in a car wreck, Jerry's bank account grows by $750,000. Strangers have deposited bomb-making equipment and assault rifles in his apartment. His cell rings, and a disembodied female voice tells him that 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 son on a train to Washington for a school gig at the Kennedy Center. She gets the same call, telling her that her freckle-faced cutie will get it if she doesn't jump in a black Porsche waiting just around the block.

All this is apparently in response to a high-tech U.S. military raid on the far side of the globe that blew up a possible terrorist target. Investigators believe that Jerry and Rachel are part of a retaliatory plot, and away we go, ultimately into the 36th-floor basement of the Pentagon, where we learn of a fictional government surveillance program that lends the film its title.

Working with Spielberg's idea (which is very much in the same vein as "Minority Report"), director D.J. Caruso ("Disturbia") is working hard to get a twist on the conspiracy thriller motif. He brings in Billy Bob Thornton and Rosario Dawson as feds who rely on human smarts to figure out what's up in the cyber-chase.

But mainly Caruso is in love with moviemaking technology. He brings us boom-boom noise, what with exploding cars and missiles slamming into things and a predator drone turned loose in a D.C. tunnel (talk about rubber-necking delays on the evening commute!) and a thunderous musical score that gooses every dramatic hoo-hah. Sharp edits bring extreme close-ups of Jerry and Rachel, filmed in a blue-steel interior lighting, a kind of off-kilter gloom, to signify their growing emotional attachment.

Hitchcock got more mileage out of Cary Grant and a crop duster in "North by Northwest" than Caruso does with all the explosions, and the noise makes you long for the quiet suspense of paranoia thrillers such as "The Conversation" and "Marathon Man," the latter letting you know that a dental pick could be more frightening than a terrorist bomb.

"Eagle Eye" seeks to disturb us with the notion that our paranoia is justified -- that cellphone won't save you, it'll bring the bad guys to getcha! -- and Caruso wrings some fine moments out of his stars. (Thornton gets all the best lines and is just great.) But its ideas turn out to be pedestrian, and reality, which needs to be at least in shouting distance in these kinds of things, gets left behind at one airport or another.

This is too bad. "Eagle Eye," with a more nuanced idea of paranoia and the ills of technology, could have been both entertaining and disturbing. Deafening isn't quite the same thing.

Eagle Eye (1 hour 58 minutes, at area theaters) is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of action and violence and for language.