I’ve got to hand it to Shia LaBeouf–the guy’s really stretching his acting chops and trying to seize the high ground of action herodom right out of the gate.  There’s no doubt he’s definitely come a long way from playing a wrongly accused juvenile delinquent back in Holes.  And his recent stint in Eagle Eye is a great way to get that status on lockdown.

The plot here is actually pretty complex.  A government program selects a man whose Air Force brother has recently died and pairs him with a young mother whose child is at risk to carry out a super-secret government program.  As we follow our duo through the course of the movie, we’ll find out steadily more about each, and about the government program they find themselves roped into working for.  By the end, the entire government of the United States will be at risk.

The downside of the plot is that it’s almost impossible to explain fully, or clearly, without unleashing a series of hardcore spoilers.  Anything I say at this point might well put a damper on your experience, and I’d hate for that to happen. This was a good movie.

This is the thing that really surprised me about Eagle Eye–it looked like just another lousy action movie going in, but the farther in I got, the more interesting twists the movie took until, ultimately, it got to a multiple twist ending.  I mean, sure, we all sort of knew how the whole thing would turn out–most of these movies DON’T end with “Washington gets reduced to a big smoking crater”, so chances were this one wouldn’t either.  But it wasn’t a foregone conclusion until the very end, and it’s that kind of suspense that gave Eagle Eye a lot of extra punch.

That and let’s face it–from a technological standpoint, this is probably now officially a Next Sunday A.D. concept–everything you see in Eagle Eye is at least kind of plausible.  Plausibility, authenticity, puts a lot of extra juice in filmmaking.  You just can’t beat it.

The tech is wonderfully likely, the acting is pretty solid in its own right—sure, I just went off about having Shia LaBeouf involved, but when I saw Billy Bob Thornton playing a grizzled old FBI agent, I was pretty cheery happy.  Seriously, Billy Bob Thornton just makes everything better.  Why was Bad Santa so good?  Simple—Billy Bob Thornton.  Oh, sure, there was plenty to like about that one but it was really Billy Bob Thornton that made the whole thing something special, and his special touches added to Eagle Eye is just a little extra awesome in the tank.

Yeah, sure, it’s a bit unlikely that the powers that be out Washington way would ever let something like this happen right under their very noses, but the possibility is still there, and again, plausibility adds authenticity and that makes a movie better.

So for a great thriller with plenty of surprises and maybe judge a smidge of science fiction, go ahead and give Eagle Eye a shot.  Chances are good you’ll like it like I did.