Who’s In It: Shia LaBeouf, Michelle Monaghan, Rosario Dawson, Michael Chiklis, Anthony Mackie, Billy Bob Thornton
The Basics: You are being watched… monitored…surveilled! Perhaps you’ve heard about this on the news. It makes for a killer zeitgeisty backdrop for a political thriller, don’t you agree? The kind where, if you don’t watch out, the vast conspiracy of evildoers who are doing the watching of you will then come and ensnare you in convoluted plots that will make less and less sense with each passing anonymous phone calls from the ensarers. In this case the phone calls come from the lady who talks you through the automated system at your bank. If you disobey her you will die. You always figured she was evil. Now you know.
What’s The Deal: The cool thing about a film like this from an actor’s standpoint (the one where you calculate the actorly energy you’ll expend being in it vs. how big a check you’ll get) is that the movie barely needs you. Oh sure, it requires meat puppets to run around and get shot at and whatnot. That can be physically demanding, definitely. But it’s not like the makers said, “You know who the ONLY person is who can play this role? That’s right, you guessed it. Shia LaBeouf.” They could have just snapped up a supporting player from Brothers and Sisters. Forty years ago it would have been Keir Dullea. It wouldn’t matter, really. And I’m not dogging Shia LaB here. It’s just that the movie is about the crashing, chasing, shooting and exploding, not about the human collateral damage left in its wake. Know that going in and you won’t care that you wasted your money on it.
Serious Amounts Of Stinging Political Commentary Delivered By This Movie Regarding Your Right To Privacy And How It’s Been Systematically Dismantled Over The Past Several Years: Uh… yeah… that stuff is really… it’s very important, yeah… but not nearly as rad to talk about as all the very cool car crashes that happen here. TONS of them! This is the kind of movie that makes kids want to grow up to be movie stunt actors.
How Much Of This Dastardly Conspiracy-Zonked Plot Could Actually Take Place: Just enough to make it slightly more believable than Transformers but not quite as authentic as the parts in Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull where they drive over half a dozen increasingly treacherous waterfalls in a Jeep and swim away unscathed.
Cast Member Slumming The Most: Michelle Monaghan. Go Netflix Gone Baby Gone for proof that she’s really an actor.