June
30
Trailer Watch: Eagle Eye
What do the movies Wanted and Eagle Eye have in common? They're fish-out-of-water scenarios that posit that an everyday schmuck --James McAvoy in one, Shia LaBeouf in the other--gets caught up in something exciting and scary involving a lot of action and danger and guns. It's the oldest trick in the book.
But the commercial recipe here is also to take a star with cred with the young male demo that opens movies (In Wanted's case, it's actually Angelina Jolie) and add them to the thriller genre mix with an older star (Wanted's Morgan Freeman, Eagle Eye's Billy Bob Thornton).
DreamWorks took this story idea by Steven Spielberg, got it written by John Glenn & Travis Adam Wright, Hillary Seitz and Dan McDermott, and when Spielberg didn't want to direct, added their Disturbia star-on-the-rise LaBeouf to the mix with his director, D. J. Caruso.
Here's the trailer for Eagle Eye, due in September.
DreamWorks should only dream that Eagle Eye does as well as Wanted--a great match of strong narrative and fab visual style that raises it above the ordinary--otherwise it's just another formula thriller.
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yes. billy bob would start out as the bad guy, then after uncovering clues realize shia is innocent and try to protect him (which would be difficult because nobody will believe billy bob). that way the character that represents the older demographic isn't passive or evil, or stupid. adds dynamics to the plot
guess i have too much time on my hands
Posted by: Alan | June 30, 2008 at 12:58 PM
Peter, it's not that Spielberg didn't want to direct it, but that INDY 4 came together pre-WGA strike and to his credit as a producer, rather than postpone a good project he developed for years to direct himself, Spielberg selflessly passed the project into the capable hands of DJ Caruso, a director who was certainly channeling Hitchcock in DISTURBIA.
This script is both a roller coaster suspense ride and a political thriller that speaks to the Iraq War in the same way Hitch's SABOTEUR, 39 STEPS, or NORTH BY NORTHWEST spoke to the Cold War.
Yes, EAGLE EYE is a genre pic with all the generic conventions of the innocent-on-the-run thriller --> but don't let that fool you. The real twist in the film is that it doesn't suck, which sadly is not true of so so so many films these days. After eight years of writing professionally, I'm extremely proud to have this be my first produced credit (along with my former writing partner and one of my best friends since 3rd grade, John Glenn). The moral of this story to me is that hard work, love of cinema, and dogged perseverance to your craft eventually pays off.
Posted by: Travis Adam Wright | August 15, 2008 at 04:47 AM
This movie gave me a headache...it was the extreme of Badd...its high dollar action scences could not help this sticker of a movie the story was simple the action was over the top and would not let up on how technology guide our lives...totally unbelievable and behind the actual times....
Posted by: Christopher Longoria | September 23, 2008 at 09:03 PM