jeremyfredrikson Review of Eagle Eye

Eagle Eye (2008)

Horrible chases and train wrecks in a Trainwreck of a film.

[2/10 · 13 January 2009]

It's very rare that I think a film's such a waste of time at the halfway mark that I don't even feel like finishing it. This is one of those rare films. There's an unfortunate trend to make chase movies with quick cut editing, interlaced with CGI, lit very darkly to hide the fact that what you are watching is as unreal as most of it looks. Take away enough reality and you take away emotional involvement from the audience. There's no sense of danger and no feeling of wanting to shout, "Look out! Go there!" Car chases can be very exciting. It doesn't take a big budget to make a great car chase either. Look at any low budget action flick directed by Joseph Mehri (Executive Target, Land Of The Free) and you'll see that real cars, driven by real stunt people, shown in broad daylight, and in wide shots are far more exciting than close-ups of "stars" sitting in a studio in front of a blue screen mixed with quick cuts of darkly lit cars and/or CGI cars. When you can't tell which cars are which or where the cars are in relation to each other, you don't get too excited when the inevitable crashes and explosions occur. Apart from the horribly choreographed and edited car chases, train wrecks (man, that looked fake!), and running scenes is the fact that what is going on is impossible. When I saw cranes moving on their own in a junkyard picking up what I assume were high speed cop cars (again, you can't tell what's going on in the action scenes since they're so dark and individual camera shots last one second at times), I almost puked. Cranes are clunky, awkward machines. Yet they can pluck cop cars up from a 90 mph chase? Gimme a break. If this was The Transformers, fine, but it's supposed to be a real world suspense thriller. It's tough to care about any of what's going on since it's all just too unbelievable, cliché ridden, poorly lit, and quickly edited. Plus, the CGI looks awful. I read somebody's comment about the CGI being very good. Are people getting so used to putting up with fake looking CGI that they are used to it as just the way it is? That's sad. Give me real cars, real stunt people, lighting, and a story that's believable enough to be somewhat emotionally involving. Give me leading characters that I would want to have a beer with instead of wanting to punch in the face for being a sarcastic little know-it-all jerk. If that's what kids today consider a characteristic to aspire to, they're going to meet an awful lot of people in the real world who aren't going to put up with it for very long. Thumbs way down for this train wreck of a "film".