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Eagle Eye
DreamWorks Pictures (Paramount)

Eagle Eye reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 43 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
7.4 out of 10
based on 30 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 87 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for intense sequences of action and violence, and for language

Starring Shia LaBeouf, Michelle Monaghan, Rosario Dawson, Michael Chiklis, Anthony Mackie, and Billy Bob Thornton

In the fast-paced race-against-time-thriller, Eagle Eye, two strangers become the pawns of a mysterious woman they have never met, but who seems to know their every move. Realizing they are being used to further her diabolical plot, they must work together to outwit the woman before she has them killed. (Paramount Pictures)


GENRE(S): Action  |  Mystery  |  Suspense/Thriller  
WRITTEN BY: Dan McDermott
Hillary Seitz
Travis Wright
John Glenn
 
DIRECTED BY: D.J. Caruso  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: December 23, 2008 
Theatrical: September 26, 2008 
RUNNING TIME: 118 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA 

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

80
Empire Ian Freer
A fun techno romp, mixing great bang for your buck with insights into the dangers of restricting civil liberties. Now, anyone for Shia killing blondes dressed as his dead mother?
Read Full Review
75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
The movie is so engrossing as an intellectual puzzle and such a solid thriller in every other department that it's probably actor-proof.
Read Full Review
67
Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt
Good, manic fun plus a heavy dose of political intrigue adding up to two hours of clamorous, mind-numbing nonsense.
Read Full Review
63
Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Monaghan gives a solid performance, and Billy Bob Thornton has sarcastically funny bits as an FBI agent.
Read Full Review
63
Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
What Eagle Eye wants to do is show us technology's dark side: all the stuff that's there to make our lives easier - ATMs, PDAs, iPods, GPS, cell phones, PCs, "smart" houses - turned against us in a vast conspiracy.
Read Full Review
63
Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Eagle Eye has half an idea in its head, but over two hours there's no time to complete or explore it, since the movie isn't just a chase but a combination steeplechase and destruction derby.
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63
Boston Globe Ty Burr
A movie only a copyright lawyer could love. It strip-mines at least three Hitchcock classics - "North by Northwest," "The Wrong Man," and "The Man Who Knew Too Much" - then commits unlawful assault on Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" just for the heck of it.
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60
Film Threat Mark Bell
In the end, the film isn't a complete waste of your time, and it is a neat little walk down a Patriot Act assisted cyber-terrorist "what if..." scenario, but don't expect anything brilliant.
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60
Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
LaBeouf shambles through the movie with an endearingly lost quality -- his savoir faire is of the hangdog kind, but it pretty much works. And Monaghan, with that upturned nose and those mischievous eyes, always looks like a woman in search of trouble.
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50
New York Post Kyle Smith
With its array of chases and shootouts and a sinister political plot, the movie at least holds your attention and keeps things brisk-ish. But every scene still bears the tags of the place from which it was stolen.
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50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
With less expensive actors, it might just have been called Chase Movie, and played for laughs.
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50
USA Today Claudia Puig
A terrorist thriller that isn't so much suspenseful as overbearing. Though it aspires to be an intriguing political cautionary tale, the movie is mostly about the feverish and jarringly choreographed chase scenes.
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50
Variety Robert Koehler
The picture's first 35 minutes sizzle until a Byzantine plot nudges the story toward near-parody in the final act.
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50
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
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. It's not an assault on intelligence. It's an assault on consciousness.
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50
Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
At least LaBeouf makes for a likable hero. He's got the same kind of easy, natural charisma as Will Smith -- who, come to think of it, starred in another techno-paranoia thriller, "Enemy of the State," that Eagle Eye strongly resembles.
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50
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
The movie doesn't have three brain cells to rub together, but the premise carries it a long way.
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50
Washington Post Neely Tucker
A sometimes entertaining flick that makes a lot of noise but doesn't have much to say.
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50
Slate Josh Levine
Quips alone do not a popcorn-movie star make. In this age of post-steroidal leading men, you don't need to be Arnold Schwarzenegger to carry a movie, but you do need to have some presence.
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45
NPR Bob Mondello
Idiotic, if reasonably kinetic, Eagle Eye -- in which Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan spend the better part of two hours urgently answering phone calls and dodging hurtling machinery -- is every bit as over-edited as it is under-thunk.
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42
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
A brain-squandering thriller.
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40
The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen
A shrill, far-fetched thriller.
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40
LA Weekly Robert Wilonsky
From tepid start to laughable middle to thudding finish (and the final two minutes smack of a reshoot), it's nothing but a herky-jerky clusterfuck of noise and nonsense.
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38
Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
The movie itself is hyperactive and a jumble.
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38
ReelViews James Berardinelli
There is no truth to the rumor that free frontal lobotomies will be performed at the entrance to all theaters showing Eagle Eye.
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38
TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Noisy, derivative and thoroughly preposterous even by the standards of 21st-century action movies.
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38
Premiere Eric Kohn
It's an empty-headed look at a national problem with modern surveillance society, but if everyone acted as stupidly as the incredulous screenplay would have you believe, then it's safe to say the movie inadvertently reflects, rather than critiques, the insanity of our times.
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38
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Questions: Did everyone involved in this botched thriller OD on speed? Does jimmy-legs director D.J. Caruso think if he slowed down the action we'd figure out how stupid the plot is?
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30
Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
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.
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25
The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
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.
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20
New York Daily News Joe Neumaier
See, everyone complains about humans in movies but no one does anything about it, so it fell to Eagle Eye to make everything laughably, ridiculously fake.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 7.4 (out of 10) based on 87 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Hyper S. gave it a5:
Unremitting bombardment of implausibility for your science fiction viewing. Non-stop action means there is some entertainment to be had, but the movie needed to take place in the year 2075 to be believable.

Brad A. gave it a7:
It really grabs you for the first 2 thirds of the movie. I personally feel that it could have been much better without the last 3rd. It was just stupid. I know that isn't an excellent review but there really is no other way to describe it. I enjoyed the film, the last bit didn't ruin the movie...it was just stupid. Plain and simple.

Mauricio L. gave it an8:
I'ts was really good it kept me entertained, a little predictable after u catch the main idea

[Anonymous] gave it an8:
Not the best movie ever, I'll say that right now. However, it's oddly compelling so that I wanted to see how it ended. In short, it's pretty good.

Bill K gave it a9:
I really liked this movie... and I think the acting done by Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan was done really well. (Plus, Shia is a very, very good looking young man!)

Hasan K. gave it a7:
Easy watching, nice entertainment.

Michael R gave it a4:
No worth renting at all. Not creative &I couldn't wait for it to be over.It was ridiculous and not believable at all.I forced myself to watch & hoped the ending would make sense of everything but it didn't.

Read more user comments...

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