Yes, they’re watching

Early IN the upcoming tech-thriller “Eagle Eye,” a suspected terrorist is in the back seat of an SUV bouncing along a rugged road in Afghanistan as a U.S. spy drone follows it from the skies overhead. The drone detects a cellphone in the car, captures its number and sends it to Washington. Intelligence agents dial the number and, as its owner starts to answer it, they order the camera to snap a photo, which is then transmitted to a distant American command center where a missile attack is being considered.

Even with that kind of eye-popping technology, the world is still complicated: “Is it him?” the officials ask as they study the grainy image and move forward with the airstrike despite their qualms. That’s the crux of this DreamWorks film: More technology doesn’t necessarily eliminate human error and sometimes it creates a high-definition version of human corruption.

The film, which opens Sept. 26, reteams star Shia LaBeouf with director D.J. Caruso, a tandem that worked together on the 2007 hit “Disturbia,” a sort of “Rear Window” for the 21st century with its tense tale of voyeurism and suspicion. If LaBeouf was Jimmy Stewart last time, in “Eagle Eye” he’s channeling Cary Grant in his “North by Northwest” man-on-the-run mode. LaBeouf portrays a scruffy, bright underachiever who comes home one afternoon to find his apartment piled high with mail-order weapons and bomb ingredients -- he’s been framed as a terrorist and he spends the rest of the film essentially running for his life.

Caruso said he hopes the film is very much of the moment with its web of political intrigue and sleek high-tech sensibility: “To me, the film falls in line with those great 1970s films like ‘The Parallax View’ and ‘Three Days of the Condor,’ but with a lot more hardware. It’s a big, fun, popcorn movie, there’s a lot happening and a lot of thrills, but we have a very strong cast and these themes that are very much a part of the world today.”

Caruso said that on a chilly night in February, not far from skid row in downtown Los Angeles. He and his crew were filming a car chase scene, one of many high-adrenaline moments in the movie. Caruso also directed “Two for the Money” with Al Pacino and “Taking Lives” with Angelina Jolie, as well as the critically acclaimed 2002 neo-noir film “The Salton Sea” with Val Kilmer. That latter film was pretty far removed from the big-budget explosions of “Eagle Eye,” but Caruso said he hopes this movie doesn’t lose its story nuances amid the falling debris.

“What I didn’t want to happen is that it got so big with the hardware and the action and the stunts that the people get lost, that it turned into something like a video game. That was my biggest fear. I really wanted to ground it with the actors. In a lot of action films these days, I walk out feeling disappointed about how un-engaged I am. They’re great to look at, but they don’t stay with you. So we went and got a strong cast, and they bring a real believability to their roles.”

The idea for “Eagle Eye” was hatched more than a decade ago by executive producer Steven Spielberg, and when it began picking up momentum about two years ago, Spielberg planned to direct the film himself. He had to pass, though, when another long-percolating project, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” finally came together after a decade and a half. Spielberg was looking for someone else to direct the film and then, as executive producer of “Disturbia,” he saw a rough cut of that film and quickly tapped Caruso to make another foray into Hitchcockian territory with “Eagle Eye.”

Uneasy feeling

“Eagle EYE” producers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (who were part of the writing team on “Transformers”) said that they found inspiration in the news coverage of the war on terrorism and that exploring the topics left them a bit rattled. “I was gripped by paranoia, believe me,” Orci said. Kurtzman added: “The reaction we want is for people to walk out of the theater and look at their cellphone and turn it off.”

Writing duties fell to John Glenn, Travis Wright, Hillary Seitz and Dan McDermott, who also gets a story credit. The film presents LaBeouf as Jerry Shaw, who is grappling with the death of his twin brother. Jerry, a college dropout who works in a copy center, is not quite the duplicate of his late brother, who studied parallel algorithms and was a resident genius employed by the Air Force.

LaBeouf’s Jerry is an irresponsible charmer who plays poker to pay the rent and sketches pretty girls he sees on the bus -- he’s also on a bit of a Luddite streak, which only heightens the anxiety when a mysterious voice on the phone informs him: “You’ve been activated.” From then on, everything around him that has a computer chip in it is used to frame him and push him on a mysterious mission. He’s not the only one: Michelle Monaghan portrays Rachel, a single mom who gets a call telling her that her son will be killed if she doesn’t do as she is told. To hammer the point home, she’s told to look in the window of a fast food restaurant across the street, where, incredibly, she suddenly sees an on-screen advertisement replaced by an image of her son looking very vulnerable.

Michael Chiklis, best known for the television cop-drama “The Shield,” plays the U.S. secretary of Defense, while Rosario Dawson and Billy Bob Thornton are on the trail of the terrorist cell they believe includes Jerry and Rachel.

On the set, Chiklis said the film is a “cautionary tale about the technology we have that can be used against us.” The actor said we live in “the age of surveillance” and that the threat of terrorism has created a culture of privacy invasion. The film doesn’t take sides or make political statements, he said, but it does make you wonder about the price we all pay to live in a digital age.

He was impressed, he said, with his costar LaBeouf. “He’s a real talent and a real pro, and I think this movie is just part of his success story that we’re all watching with great interest. It’s easy in a movie like this to get lost in the moving parts, but he has a real strength on-screen.”

Caruso agreed: “It’s fun to see him grow up. He was a boy on ‘Disturbia’ and now I see he’s a young man. At 21 years old, you look at his work in these last few years and you get a sense that he is going to be a major star for many, many years. He’s an old soul already. He has a calm, serene part of him and what he experienced at a young age, he has a lot of good actor baggage. He lived a very interesting young life.”

LaBeouf may be the star, but Caruso said the story of “Eagle Eye” will be what sticks with viewers when they leave the darkened theater and head out to the lobby where security cameras may be tracking them as they pass the popcorn stand.

“It’s about what the government is seeing and what they’re not seeing. Everywhere you go, you’re filmed by traffic cams and security cams, everywhere you go on the Internet can be tracked -- 10 years ago you couldn’t have made this movie but now, everything happening to our characters is viable. The FBI can listen to your conversations through the microphone on your phone even when your phone is shut off. That is what ‘Eagle Eye’ is about. After you see this movie, you should be afraid of your BlackBerry a little bit.”

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geoff.boucher@latimes.com

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In LaBeouf’s corner: Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg is certainly a Shia LaBeouf fan. Spielberg was the executive producer of the LaBeouf starrers “Disturbia,” “Transformers” and now “Eagle Eye.” He also directed the young actor in “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.” There’s more to come: LaBeouf is starring in the 2009 sequel “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” and there is some buzz that LaBeouf might be involved in a revisiting of Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park” franchise.

-- G.B.