D.J. Caruso
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Having watched a number of martial arts and horror films recently, I have sadly been exposed to both, albeit in the (perhaps) excusable context of old school grindhouse flicks, so by the time yours truly arrived at a screening for the new Rear Window ripoff -- excuse me, homage -- Disturbia I'd all but completely lost patience for either telegraphed punches or teenagers with too much time and too little sense.Unfortunately, Disturbia stars a teenager -- Shia LeBeouf -- who seems to have no shortage whatsoever of good sense, so the only mystery that remains in this catalogue of fright-film clich?s is why he accepted the role.
In a modern reworking of Rear Window , troubled teenager Kale (Shia LaBeouf) blames himself for his father's death; his behavior lands him under house arrest for the summer.
Resembling, without copying, the voyeuristic storyline of Hitchcockâs Rear Window, Disturbia also brings to mind other techno-thrillers like Coppolaâs The Conversation or fear-of-neighbors comedies like Joe Danteâs The âburbs.
A contemporary remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, the film is likewise witty and intelligent — that is, until the final act, when it eschews the tension of an unreliable point of view for modern horror elements.
" Disturbia " is a low-cal version of " Rear Window ."
The teen thriller "Disturbia," in which a housebound voyeur stumbles upon a possible murderer across the way, is basically an uncredited remake of the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock classic "Rear Window" (which was in turn based on a 1942 Cornell Woolrich story).
"The Fugitive," "The Bourne Identity," "North By Northwest," "The Manchurian Candidate."
Having tackled Rear Window in Disturbia , director D.J. Caruso (again with LaBeouf) seems poised to undertake North by Northwest this time, but the film owes as much to Enemy of the State (the phrase is actually used) as any Hitchcock fare, with a dash of Live Free or Die Hard thrown in for good measure.
Suddenly they're off on a familiar journey - "North by Northwest" and "The Man Who Knew Too Much" are poached from, though the biggest lift is from "2001: A Space Odyssey."
In "Eagle Eye" LaBeouf is once again a Hitchcockian archetype - the innocent man wrongly accused, as seen in "The 39 Steps" or "North by Northwest."
They're both too soft and normal to be up for the exertions the story requires of them; a big part of the fun of something like North by Northwest lies in watching the comfortable Roger O. Thornhill pick up the skills he needs to survive one at a time, but in Eagle Eye, it takes Jerry the copy boy all of one scene to be able to leap out of skyscrapers and dodge speeding el trains.
Reuniting Shia LaBeouf and director D.J. Caruso after their mid-level hit Disturbia, Eagle Eye begins like another modern take on Hitchcock classics; If Disturbia felt like Rear Window with a Generation Y (or, really, Z) cast, Eagle Eye plays like North By Northwest 2.0 with a touch of The Man Who Knew Too Much, as LaBeouf's Jerry Shaw is plucked from his normal life and turned into a wanted man when an anonymous voice on the telephone starts giving him orders, and Jerry has to comply or die.
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
influenced Eagle Eye (2008)
Plot Themes
Reuniting Shia LaBeouf and director D.J. Caruso after their mid-level hit Disturbia, Eagle Eye begins like another modern take on Hitchcock classics; If Disturbia felt like Rear Window with a Generation Y (or, really, Z) cast, Eagle Eye plays like North By Northwest 2.0 with a touch of The Man Who Knew Too Much, as LaBeouf's Jerry Shaw is plucked from his normal life and turned into a wanted man when an anonymous voice on the telephone starts giving him orders, and Jerry has to comply or die.
Just as "Disturbia" borrowed heavily from "Rear Window" (1954), Caruso displays a propensity here for constantly tipping his hat to Hitchcock's work, to the point of virtually recreating the entire concert-hall climax of "The Man Who Knew Too Much" (1956).
Inspired by producer Stephen Speilberg, while this is a thinly veiled attack on The Patriot Act, it is still a high-tension thriller, regardless of your political belief, reminiscent of (if not homages to) �2001� (1968), �Colossus: The Forbin Project� (1970), and even "The Man Who Knew Too Much" (1956).
It strip-mines at least three Hitchcock classics - "North by Northwest," "The Wrong Man," and "The Man Who Knew Too Much" - then commits unlawful assault on Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" just for the heck of it.
Here are the Cliff's Notes on "I Am Number Four": "Twilight" with aliens.
Almost exasperatingly predictable and derivative from the get-go, I Am Number Four is soulless factory-line junk that might even struggle maintain the interest of its core audience – the Twilight set – from numbing over-familiarity; one is too often reliving moments from Heroes, Roswell, The Faculty, Transformers, et al to enjoy the film.
Conceived by Oprah-vilified author James Frey as the beginning of a potential blockbuster franchise, I Am Number Four is nothing but a million little pieces from prior superhero series and the Twilight saga.
They are there for the bottom line: to keep their mouths shut and appease Dreamworks Pictures' derivative, half-assed attempt at appealing to the " Twilight " demographic while earning a hefty paycheck in the process.
The plot of the last “Twilight” movie, right?
…dapting young-adult novels into movies has become big business for Hollywood over the last few years, but the success of the “Twilight” films has led studios to focus on a specific type of story – namely, ones about mopey teenagers falling in love with just the right amount of action to convince male moviegoers to tag along with their female counterparts.
Actually, it’s quite laughable, but for the sake of those sensitive to spoilers, I’ll leave it with this: it seems the screenwriters loved “2001,” “WarGames,” and “The Terminator” so much, they decided to pluck what they needed to fill their own creative pockets, even cribbing from Hitchcock for the grand finale.
Then there's the film's many obvious sources of inspiration, which include (but are not limited to) 2001, Blade Runner, Tron, Wargames, The Terminator, The Fugitive, the Bourne films, and Live Free or Die Hard.
When your movie is essentially ripping off “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “WarGames,” however, it is not as easy to forgive.
The two worked together on Badham's superior "WarGames" (1983), and they spend the short time discussing the similarities between the two films.
Suddenly they're off on a familiar journey - "North by Northwest" and "The Man Who Knew Too Much" are poached from, though the biggest lift is from "2001: A Space Odyssey."
More disturbia-ing, Hollywood is collecting and recycling ideas from other, better films—in this case, Hitchcock thrillers and even 2001: A Space Odyssey.
When your movie is essentially ripping off “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “WarGames,” however, it is not as easy to forgive.
That said, even the not terribly eagle-eyed will spot plot points from George Orwell's 1984, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alfred Hitchcock's North By Northwest, and a variety of Enemy of the State/Parallax View-style paranoid thrillers about nobodies drafted into assassination schemes.
A number of scenarios appear to have been cut and pasted from the likes of Enemy Of The State, Die Hard 4.0 and even 2001: A Space Odyssey.
It strip-mines at least three Hitchcock classics - "North by Northwest," "The Wrong Man," and "The Man Who Knew Too Much" - then commits unlawful assault on Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" just for the heck of it.
Having tackled Rear Window in Disturbia , director D.J. Caruso (again with LaBeouf) seems poised to undertake North by Northwest this time, but the film owes as much to Enemy of the State (the phrase is actually used) as any Hitchcock fare, with a dash of Live Free or Die Hard thrown in for good measure.
Like Smithâs Enemy of the State, Eagle Eyeâs backdrop is a world gone mad with surveillance and, like The Terminator trilogy, one where the machines have slipped their leashes and taken over.
The Will Smith version was “Enemy of the State” (1998).
Arriving at least a half decade too late (it’s a blatant rip-off of 1998’s Enemy of the State, among other Big Brother-gone-wrong yarns); it’s truly shocking that Steven Spielberg attached his name to this.
If the plot of Eagle Eye resembles 1998's Enemy Of The State, LaBeouf's performance is similarly reminiscent of Will Smith's in that Tony Scott-helmed techno-political blockbuster (high praise, in a movie star kind of way).
A number of scenarios appear to have been cut and pasted from the likes of Enemy Of The State, Die Hard 4.0 and even 2001: A Space Odyssey.
That you may find its supposed take on suburbia far less disturbing (despite its title) than Joe Dante’s The ‘Burbs (1989) is another matter.
Besides, the movie has way more in common, in terms of actual execution, with 1984’s Body Double and 1989’s The ‘burbs than anything else.
Actually, if you want to compare Disturbia to something, it’s almost exactly like the Tom Hanks comedy The 'Burbs, only without any attempt to be funny and with a bunch of annoying, too-perfect teenagers.
The most obvious rip-off is "Live Free Or Die Hard," which did a much better job of managing a similar premise - powerful surveillance and command and control computers in the wrong hands.
Having tackled Rear Window in Disturbia , director D.J. Caruso (again with LaBeouf) seems poised to undertake North by Northwest this time, but the film owes as much to Enemy of the State (the phrase is actually used) as any Hitchcock fare, with a dash of Live Free or Die Hard thrown in for good measure.
For example, even as the movie borrows the traffic-light manipulations of Live Free or Die Hard and The Italian Job, its opening chase scene manufactures a few thrills of its own: The pacing, the sound, and the effects are all in the 90th percentile of such things, and the closing cars-vs.-hooks-in-a-wrecking-yard…
Listing the works that Eagle Eye borrows from would be too blatant a giveaway, but it's clear these guys watched Live Free or Die Hard and read Debt of Honor by Tom Clancy, mixed in with certain unnamed cinema classics, and decided that a good filmmaking method would be to ram all of these things into each other head first and see what emerged.
What's ironic is that the movie is reminiscent of the technological action angle of "Live Free or Die Hard", but what kept that action movie entertaining was Bruce Willis keeping even the most tense situations light, something that "Eagle Eye" sorely needs.
DJ Caruso has enjoyably preposterous material -- it's sort of like Live Free or Die Hard for the left wing -- and he approaches it with a portentousness that kills the fun.
"The Fugitive," "The Bourne Identity," "North By Northwest," "The Manchurian Candidate."
Then there's the film's many obvious sources of inspiration, which include (but are not limited to) 2001, Blade Runner, Tron, Wargames, The Terminator, The Fugitive, the Bourne films, and Live Free or Die Hard.
The supporting cast (including Thornton, Michael Chiklis and Rosario Dawson) is made up of fine actors, but only Thornton gets any real snap and sizzle in his scenes; Thornton may be channeling Tommy Lee Jones's character from The Fugitive, but that at least makes it possible to hear cliché lines like "They've hacked into the power grid ..." without your wanting to actively fall asleep.
Billy Bob Thornton as Agent Thomas Morgan: The first half of the film, when Thornton is channeling Tommy Lee Jones from The Fugitive, it works, especially when he is barking out orders at his men.
Working from an assured screenplay by T.J. Fixman (Ratchet & Clank), Collet-Serra (Black Adam, The Shallows) crafts a satisfying surveillance thriller reminiscent of Eagle Eye (2008) and Phone Booth (2002). Like Shia LaBeouf’s Jerry, Michelle Monaghan’s Rachel and Colin Farrell’s Stuart, Egerton’s Ethan finds himself under the control of an anonymous extortioner. (The instructions come to Ethan through a tiny earpiece dropped off by a random traveler.)
Lucky for everyone behind I Am Number Four, their target audience may not be old enough to have seen the first Spider-Man in theaters, much less Pretty in Pink, and all of the movie's moments of unoriginality could wash right over the girls wooed by Pettyfer's good looks or the boys in need of a Michael Bay action fix before the next Transformers movie.
With Michael "Boom Boom" Bay producing, it's not surprising that "Number Four" comes fully loaded with some of the best action any high school kids have gotten since Shia LaBeouf in "Transformers."
Based on the young-adult novel by Pittacus Lore (pseudonym used by James Frey and Jobie Hughes), it’s been adapted by Alfred Gough & Mark Millar (creators of TV’s “Smallville”) and Marti Noxon, superficially directed by D.J. Caruso (“Disturbia,” “Eagle Eye”) and over-produced by Michael Bay (“Transformers”).
With some big names attached to “I Am Number Four” (“Transformers,” “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” and “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” director Michael Bay produces and Steven Spielberg was previously attached as a producer), the film invests heavily and successfully in its action sequences and special effects.
But the spirit of the movie is heavy and calculating, in the "Transformers" vein.
This is, after all, a film produced by Bay, the man behind the " Transformers " series.
It strip-mines at least three Hitchcock classics - "North by Northwest," "The Wrong Man," and "The Man Who Knew Too Much" - then commits unlawful assault on Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" just for the heck of it.
The Terminator (1984)
Directed by James Cameron
influenced Eagle Eye (2008), I Am Number Four (2011)
Themes Plot
Actually, it’s quite laughable, but for the sake of those sensitive to spoilers, I’ll leave it with this: it seems the screenwriters loved “2001,” “WarGames,” and “The Terminator” so much, they decided to pluck what they needed to fill their own creative pockets, even cribbing from Hitchcock for the grand finale.
Like Smithâs Enemy of the State, Eagle Eyeâs backdrop is a world gone mad with surveillance and, like The Terminator trilogy, one where the machines have slipped their leashes and taken over.
Pairing Jerry with divorced mother Rachel (Michelle Monaghan), who's cooperating to save her imperiled young son, the shadowy puppetmaster is soon revealed to be an in-beta national security supercomputer known as Aria, which has been granted control of virtually every facet of 21st -century life because, apparently, no one in the government has ever seen The Terminator.
Then there's the film's many obvious sources of inspiration, which include (but are not limited to) 2001, Blade Runner, Tron, Wargames, The Terminator, The Fugitive, the Bourne films, and Live Free or Die Hard.
I Am Number Four is about an hour of turgid melodrama and wan sci-fi (Smallville style), followed by a half hour of alien conspiracy revealed (The X-Files) and about ten minutes of all-heck-breaks-loose fighting and explosions (The Terminator).
In "Eagle Eye" LaBeouf is once again a Hitchcockian archetype - the innocent man wrongly accused, as seen in "The 39 Steps" or "North by Northwest."
The Conversation (1974)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
influenced Disturbia (2007), Eagle Eye (2008)
Plot Themes
Resembling, without copying, the voyeuristic storyline of Hitchcockâs Rear Window, Disturbia also brings to mind other techno-thrillers like Coppolaâs The Conversation or fear-of-neighbors comedies like Joe Danteâs The âburbs.
Think of Eagle Eye as The Conversation 2.0 as our two hapless heroes speed their way through the marvellously Byzantine plot.
What might have been a zeitgeist-fueled paranoid thriller along the lines of “The Conversation” or “Three Days of the Condor” winds up an unintentionally hilarious exercise in the suspension of disbelief, peppered with confusingly edited car chases.
That's why my vote for the next Caruso/LaBeouf knock-off goes to "Frenzy," which features just a few characters and a streamlined story.
Besides, the movie has way more in common, in terms of actual execution, with 1984’s Body Double and 1989’s The ‘burbs than anything else.
It’s all glum, pseudo-rebellious attitude, with none of the gentle charm of John Carpenter’s Starman.
Evangelista seems to be channeling Aaron Yoo from “Disturbia,” and Black-D’Elia and Gardner are mostly decorative feminine additions to the crew.