‘Eagle Eye’ doesn’t fly high

“Eagle Eye” starts off with a bang and stays in overdrive for its entire two-hour running time. Maybe the filmmakers were trying to pack in enough action to make the audience overlook the nonsensical plot. Maybe they were trying to hide the fact that they had blatantly ripped off about a dozen better films. Whatever the reason, sheer inertia keeps “Eagle Eye” from collapsing under the weight of its own stupidity.

Shia LaBeouf plays Jerry Shaw, a young slacker working at a copy store struggling to pay his rent. One day, he goes to the ATM and discovers $750,000 in his bank account.  He returns to his apartment to find it filled to the ceiling with high-tech weaponry and explosives. A mysterious woman calls his cell phone and tells him he has 30 seconds to escape. Suddenly, the FBI comes swinging through his window and busting down his door to arrest him as a terrorist. Next thing he knows, he’s being interrogated by Billy Bob Thornton.

Don’t you just hate days like that?

When Jerry picks up a phone to make his one call while in custody, the same female voice is on the line. After helping him escape, she coerces him into following her instructions. Soon Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan), a single mother who is similarly threatened, is forced to join Jerry on his journey.

The voice is like some kind of vengeful technology-god, using cranes, drones, and, in one particularly memorable scene, high-tension power lines to smite those who get in her way.

But her omnipotence quickly becomes comic. She seems to have complete control over not just computer systems, but the entire world. And if she is really so powerful, why exactly does she need a couple of people to run around doing her bidding?

At one point, Rachel asks Jerry if he thinks the woman on the phone could really derail a train as she has threatened. Jerry responds, “She could turn a train into a talking duck if she wanted to.”

Actually, compared to other events in the film, that doesn’t sound that crazy.

The movie becomes increasingly ridiculous as it goes along. By the end, people are splashing around in liquid nitrogen and computers are quoting the Declaration of Independence.

There are, however, enough exciting sequences to keep the movie afloat. A chase in the baggage chutes of an airport and the finale on the floor of the House of Representatives are both fun scenes.

Unfortunately, the movie is amazingly unoriginal. It seems like the plot was just slapped together from pieces of other sci-fi movies. It is hard to build any suspense when the audience is several steps ahead because they have seen it all before.

“Eagle Eye” borrows generously from “Terminator,” “Live Free or Die Hard,” “Enemy of the State,” “24,” “North by Northwest,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and even “Wall-E.” Yes, key plot points are suspiciously reminiscent of last summer’s popular Pixar film.

“Eagle Eye” is not trying to make any coherent statement (which is a shame because there is plenty of material about technology and privacy here to explore), but its frenetic pace and plentiful action scenes keep it reasonably entertaining.