Notable Movie of 2008 #2: Eagle Eye

I just got back from a bar and I'm a little out of it. Given my current mental state, I figured it might be a good time to update the site since its been neglected ever since I've finished classes this semester. I'm also in a strange altered state of mind and this might be a good time to write about something I truly loathe.

Eagle Eye is terrible.

The plot starts out innocently enough - you have this guy (Shia Lebouf) and this girl (Michelle Monaghan) and they get screwed over by the government into doing what they want. But it's not really the government, no! It's the (SPOILER) artificial intelligence developed by the government. This construct was programmed to behave a certain manner once it evaluated that the current governing body of the US was incompetent, but it went about it in such a roundabout way that it just borders on ridiculous.

During the course of the movie you realize that Michelle Monaghan's kid would be transferred to a specific performance in a room where the President of the US would just happen to be in. That's all well and good, until the story tells you her character's son is a trumpet player and the Eagle Eye AI just happens to set up a bomb to blow up when a specific set of notes were inputted into his trumpet. How stupid is that? Surely the AI would've been smart enough to make the bomb blow up as soon as the President was within range of the bomb, or, if not that, then when certain conditions were met to properly engage the explosion. But no, it is written in to have the bomb blow up only when a very specific set of rules had been fulfilled, and I must say it is borderline ludicrous.

And where does Shia Lebouf fit into all this? He had a twin brother whose hand print (NOT fingerprint) was needed to execute the final procedure to kill the President. What I find silly about this is that even if they were identical twins (which they are in this flick, but that doesn't really matter), the hand prints would NOT be the same for them, so this Eagle Eye's logic is totally flawed. This might be a problem that's a result mostly to my brain thinking, "WTF that doesn't make sense?!", but really, if you're making a movie whose twist is "OH SHIT they're twins and he needs to tell the AI to do whatever it's doing already anyway" (ie, Eagle Eye is setting a certain sequence of events to happen prior to the handprint authorization, which would've been hard coded into her AI programming), you better have executed the plot near masterfully for me to swallow it.

I realize that there is a certain level of disbelief to be had for movies, but there are some nagging factors with this movie that gets in the way: 1) it uses the tired formula of an evil A.I. - if it was a more original story, or if it had been executed better, I would've been more forgiving; and 2) it's set in our era.

My number 2 reason borders on "nit-picking", but I figure I might as well mention it. The setting is based on our world as it is, right now, technologically, intellectually, and what have you. How is this computer program smart enough to interpret all of these things coherently? I would have to think that the Senior Programmer of Eagle Eye would've specifically programmed it as follows: "Ok, Eagle Eye, if the US Government sucks, do this; else, do this. Listen to the speech pattern of whoever talks to you and interpret it as follows: (continues to program every single possible English phrase and programs Eagle eye to respond accordingly)." And so on and so forth.

It's a lot of stuff; if I'd have to program it, it would've taken me longer than it would've taken to solve the chess problem algorithmically. At least with the Matrix it's set at a more indeterminate time period so it's not quite as big a deal, but Eagle Eye happens around ours. It's harder for me to swallow.

There are some cheap thrills to be had but then again the way it was shot was bordering on cruddy -- during the action-y scenes they'd do a "Bourne Supremacy"-ish camera style that seemed out of place. Sure, I'm a big fan of the Bourne series, but when you're watching a movie that was shot in a traditional manner only to be surprised later by a more avant-garde style, you'd be like, "What the eff?"

All in all, I wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone, and that's why it's a notable movie of 2008 for me.

Verdict: If I had a friend that I loathed with the very essence of my being, maybe I would've told him to rent this movie. Other than that, though, my two thumbs are buried so deep within the ground that they're ordering Chinese food.

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Quickies

I started messing around with LAMP, which is a web server based around linux, apache, mysql, and php. I put it on a laptop and am hosting it at home, out of my ISP's internet connection, but don't tell them -- it's kinda-sorta outside of my TOS. I'm only using it for educational purposes so I can learn something about handling databases, though, so it might ok in the short run.

I swear, I will beat Tales of Vesperia this week! I gotta finish that so I can focus more on other games like Tomb Raider: Underground, Fallout 3, Fable 2, and Left 4 Dead. As an aside, Left 4 Dead is, by far, the best game of this year.

The pigeon union is in a bit of a rut. There are a few problems going on with management and its livelihood is in jeopardy, but we'll see what happens with that in the near future.

Bioinformatics is awesome.