After navigating the double-edged sword of both a troubled upbringing and the pressures of being a child star, Shia LaBeouf looked as though he had a rocket strapped to his back as he began a rapid ascent up the Hollywood ladder. Following co-starring roles alongside some of the biggest action heroes in the business thanks to lending support to Will Smith in I, Robot and Keanu Reeves in Constantine, the young star headlined a blockbuster of his own when he took top billing in Michael Bay’s Transformers.
It was a huge hit all over the world, and suddenly LaBeouf found himself at the top of casting lists everywhere. Before he decided to turn his back on the studio system, he shared the screen with another icon as Harrison Ford’s long-lost son Mutt Williams in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and then played the lead in D.J. Caruso’s action thriller Eagle Eye.
The film sees the actor star as Jerry Shaw, a regular guy who discovers that his identical twin brother has been killed, setting off a chain reaction that finds him thrown into the path of Michelle Monaghan’s Rachel Holloman, forcing the two strangers to co-exist as an unseen enemy controls and manipulates their lives via the technology all around them, sending them on the run as the country’s most-wanted fugitives.
It’s a solid concept, and Eagle Eye was a success after earning $178 million at the box office, but it would be an understatement to call it convoluted. The plot is ludicrous, far-fetched and doesn’t make a lick of sense, which is probably why it’s been playing so well on Netflix. Subscribers love mindless entertainment, as the most-watched list regularly shows, so it’s no wonder this forgotten Shia LaBeouf pic has been posting a strong showing on the Top 20 chart.