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Eagle Eye

Caruso made a strategic move by following up Disturbia with another Spielberg-executive produced flick and by reteaming with budding star LaBeouf. Eagle Eye falls somewhere between Caruso’s previous two efforts in terms of legitimate quality (keep in mind the entire quality scale for Caruso is a different barometer than we’ve used for other Director’s Spotlight columns). It sports a sleeker look and bigger budget than his other outings, but the story is pure Hollywood-crap.

Eagle Eye literally takes the concept “what if your phone called you claiming that if you didn’t do exactly what you were told then you would die.” Using that phone as an impetus for everything that follows in the next 100 minutes, you could essentially craft the most absurd, implausible, over-the-top, preposterous, and intermittently clever scenes and set pieces without any need to actually string them together with logic or linear sense.

But as every year we are reminded, plot isn’t everything to moviegoers, and Eagle Eye capitalized on a flashy and captivating trailer. Eagle Eye opened to a markedly strong $29 million, again more than doubling a star-driven opener on the same weekend (Richard Gere and Diane Lane’s Nights in Rodanthe). It had solid enough legs as well, giving it a total domestic gross of $101 million and another $77 million overseas. Compare that total against a large but reasonable $80 million budget and Caruso had a second straight box office success story.

The opening weekends of Eagle Eye and Disturbia are perhaps more helpful for distinguishing LaBeouf’s star wattage than his Transformers or Indiana Jones appearances. Next up, Caruso will have to prove his worth without his protégé, but not without a helping hand from Spielberg.

I Am Number Four

In the last couple of years, with such a down economy, studios in Hollywood have slowed down in optioning the rights to top-selling novels. The lone exception to that rule: young adult genre fare. It’s been ten years since Harry Potter took a hold on moviegoers, and Hollywood moguls are still searching for a franchise that can have a fraction of that pull and longevity. Even with that allowance, it is especially unusual that a book that is due for an August release has already been picked up by Spielberg, Michael Bay, and the DreamWorks team to convert for the silver screen.

I Am Number Four (the book) is written by James Frey – who is most notable for the Oprah Winfrey acclaimed-and-then-denounced biography A Million Little Pieces. Number Four looks to be a very different type of story – it follows the paths of nine gifted alien teenagers who survive an intergalactic war and take refuge on Earth. Apparently their enemies must kill them in order, and the first three have already met their end. I Am Number Four will follow the fourth alien teenager (presumably he will look like a CW starlet) as he tries to defeat his enemies and protect his new high school sweetheart in a small Ohio town. Apparently the first three to be killed off were all in far more exotic locations around the globe, but presumably the small-town America storyline will be more relatable.

As wary as I have become of every film that sets itself up as “the next Harry Potter,” I have a little bit more faith in I Am Number Four. First off, it returns Caruso to high school age characters. In his last three outings, by far the best thing Caruso was able to do was portray some of the fun and folly of 17-year-olds in Disturbia. Caruso doesn’t exactly seem to be stretching outside of the profitable little niche he’s built for himself – and that’s fine, really. Not everyone should be high-brow, and not everyone should try to be, either. But with screenwriters from Smallville working on the adaptation and sci-fi aficionado Spielberg backing him yet again, I Am Number Four could very well be a critical step in the right direction and another commercial success for Caruso.

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