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Eagle Eye director DJ Caruso’s last film Disturbia was an unabashed love letter to the work of director Alfred Hitchcock - the plot was similar enough to Hitch’s Rear Window to get Disturbia’s producers sued by the original story’s writer. Though Eagle Eye comes courtesy of an original story that producer Steven Spielberg has had percolating in that multibillion dollar brain of his for years, Caruso nonetheless gets his Hitchcock loving fingerprints all over it as well. This one is North By Northwest all the way; like the Cary Grant classic, it’s the story of an everyman mistaken for some sort of spy type - the idea of ‘the wrong man’ and/or a case of mistaken identity being one of the strongest running motifs in Hitchcock’s oeuvre – caught up in intrigue and forced to go on the run while trying to figure out just what is going on. It even features said wrong man being chased down by a maniacal plane, in a 21st century twist on the well known image from North by Northwest.

Indeed, there’s a lot about Eagle Eye that is a 21st century twist on something classic. The film’s villain (kept a suspenseful secret for a hefty chunk of the running time) is pleasurably old school and perhaps even hokey; in the interest of avoiding spoilers I won’t get too specific, but suffice to say that at its core this antagonist would feel right at home in a movie released back in the 50s. There’s a plotline that couldn’t be told without the technological advancements of the past ten or fifteen years, but the story still feels like a throwback to the straightforward thrillers of cinema past. There’s even an element of cliché and implausibility that definitely seems right at home in Spielberg’s earlier films; the uber-director’s love of tidy resolutions and sacrifice of gritty realism in favor of a different kind of outlandish entertainment definitely made their way onscreen. It’s a relatively compelling story that Spielberg has come up with, but there’s more than a few things that audiences will probably have trouble buying.

But one thing that goes a long way towards overcoming this and any other problem Eagle Eye has is the utterly engaging performance by Shia Lebeouf as everyman Jerry Shaw. Though his relatively sudden ascent to superstardom has given the young actor something of a backlash, his work here is equal parts charming, entertaining and convincing. He’s believable in his portrayal of a confused regular Joe, more than capable of pulling off stunts (thankfully he doesn’t swing from any trees with any monkeys) and most importantly brings a satisfying sense of humor whenever the film calls for it. Michelle Monaghan is spot on as a mother in distress caught up in the scheme and Billy Bob Thornton gets more than a few zingers of his own as a sardonic Federal agent, but this show is all Shia and it’s all the better for it.

Caruso has said he wanted to bring a style that was more reminiscent of the thrillers of the 70s - probably to juxtapose it with the up to the minute technological aspects of the storyline - but unfortunately he only partially succeeds. A few action sequences do feel organic and suspensefully raw, but most of it doesn’t measure up; a crash heavy car chase, for example, is painfully CGI with blurry cuts and poorly edited action that doesn’t feel anything like the confidently framed images of films like The French Connection. In fact, if the weakest point of Eagle Eye was to be singled out it would inevitably have to be Caruso’s direction. The helmer is inexperienced with spectacle and it shows; he handles the mounting tension and unfolding mystery just fine, but as soon as the film gets into action packed overdrive it is easy to wish that a more accomplished director was in charge of things.

Perhaps its just the rushed schedule of the film (shooting didn’t even start until November of last year, meaning the movie was filmed, edited and released in a scant ten months), or maybe the no doubt lower than a summer blockbuster budget that the film received, but Eagle Eye’s action just doesn’t deliver, or at least as satisfyingly as it should have. Instead of feeling like what Caruso probably intended – a character driven thriller with a few action sequences – Eagle Eye feels like an action film that doesn’t have the talent behind the camera, the money behind the project or the guts across the board to carry out the action as well as it should. But if one can get over the action that doesn’t live up to what it could be, and the cheese factor that occasionally rears its cliché head, there is certainly a good but not great thriller about the perils of modern technology with an entertaining star in the lead role. And if nothing else, it’s certainly a fine primer on the works of Alfred Hitchcock…

Grade: B-

- Jeff Latta