Eagle Eye (DVD)

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Video:
DreamWorks present the film on disc in its original 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio using an anamorphic transfer. As with so many action thrillers these days, this one has a dark metallic aspect to it, yet despite its dusky palette, it comes off looking pretty good, with deep black levels, solid colors, and fairly good definition for the SD format. Facial tones are usually natural in appearance, although occasionally a face will show up as slightly green tinted. I assume that's intentional.

Audio:
The movie sports an action flick's typically robust Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, with plenty of big, boomy bass, strong dynamic impact, and plentiful surround activity. Indeed, there is almost as much response from the side and rear channels as from the front channels. The trouble with the sound is that it's too much of good thing. It's mostly nonstop noisy, with the loudest passages (which occur most of the time) obscuring the film's dialogue. Expect to hear explosions, crashes, booms, bangs, gunshots, subway trains, speeding cars, helicopters, airplanes, you name it, from all six or eight speakers. Some listeners will love the soundtrack and feel that it deserves a 10/10. However, as I felt about most of the rest of the movie, I thought it was overdone.

Extras:
Disc one of this 2-Disc Special Edition contains the feature film plus a few assorted extras. First up among the extras are three deleted scenes lasting about three-and-a-half minutes. After that is a brief, three-minute featurette, "Road Trip," following some of the location shooting with the cast and crew.

Things finish up with twenty-four scene selections and English, French, and Spanish spoken languages and subtitles.

Disc two contains a load of additional bonus items, and as I was watching them, I couldn't help wondering how much money studios must spend on filming and assembling these things. I mean, studios must have whole crews out filming the filming. We've even had some documentaries on the filming of documentaries about the filming of movies; take the making of "Hearts of Darkness," for instance, the documentary on the making of "Apocalypse Now." And why is it that studios always feel that the better the film did at the box office, the more extras they need to include on the special editions? Shouldn't it be the other way around? They don't need to "sell" a popular title to the buying public; they'll buy it in any case. I dunno. Life is a mystery.

The first thing we get on the second disc is a one-minute alternate ending that seems a wasted a minute. Next, we get the main, twenty-five-minute, behind-the-scenes documentary "Asymmetrical Warfare: The Making of Eagle Eye." It's nothing we haven't seen before. After that is the six-minute featurette "Eagle Eye on Location: Washington, D.C.," about the famous locations the filmmakers used. Then there's the nine-minute "Is My Cell Phone Spying on Me?," which reiterates the movie's premise that people are watching us all the time, followed by the nine-minute "Shall We Play a Game?," wherein director D.J. Caruso converses with his old mentor, director John Badham ("War Games"). Finally, we find a seven-minute gag reel, a photo gallery, and a widescreen theatrical trailer. The two discs come housed in a double, slim-line keep case, further enclosed in a handsome cardboard slipcover.

Parting Shots:
The question, I suppose, is why some movies just as preposterous as "Eagle Eye" can get away with their far-fetched action while others, like this one, just make us roll our eyes and groan. The answer obviously is in the movie's tone. Either a movie has to make light of the improbable action, as the "Indiana Jones" or " Die Hard" series did, or make the action seem at least remotely possible, as Christopher Nolan's "Batman" films or the Daniel Craig Bond films did. The biggest problem with "Eagle Eye" is that it takes itself too seriously without making us believe in any of it.

Let me put it another way: There is no reason why a good action movie, no matter how harebrained it may be, cannot satisfy even the most demanding audience. The trick is for it to follow its own internal logic; it must adhere to the rules it sets down for itself. Otherwise, viewers have no reason to suspend their disbelief. "Eagle Eye" does not follow its own rules; it tries to be realistic yet it's absurd at the same time, and the result is disconcerting.

Nevertheless, if you're an action fan, the movie's got plenty of that--action--even if it's "plenty" to the point of being tiresome.

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