The story is not bad, although nothing really new it’s still interesting. Two people who never met each other, Jerry Shaw (Shia LaBeouf) and Rachel (Michelle Monaghan) are contacted by the same mysterious female voice on the phone. They receive orders that they must obey, for Jerry’s own safety and for Rachel’s son’s life. They are controlled everywhere, the voice knows everything they say or do, and gives them orders as they go. It is soon clear that they are not the only one blackmailed into obeying the orders, and is pretty clear that there is no way to escape, since whoever it is can control everything. Half-way through the movie it reveals itself as a big, intelligent, independent-thinking machine called ARIIA, actually created by the government, who following the constitution thinks that the actual government is a threat to the People and must therefore be eliminated.
The problem though is that the characters are so stereotypical they are not interesting at all. Rachel specially, is a young single mom who threw out her husband when her child was still a baby, we don’t know why, but we know she thinks that he was the biggest mistake of her life, that he doesn’t pay alimony and that he always forgets his son’s birthday... a divorced young woman and a single man as the lead characters, I wonder how the movie will end... :-/ no surprises there of course. In movies it always seems that surviving together is the best start of any romantic relationships :-/
Jerry and Rachel try various times to say no to the voice, but they are forced to go on - although it’s pretty annoying to hear Rachel say ‘no no’ so many times, as if it wasn’t her son’s life at stake here. Well, actually it wasn’t because we see at the end that Rachel and her son were key to Ariia’s plan, so none of them was supposed to die too soon, but she didn’t know that.
They are led into Ariia’s main chamber, where Jerry’s twin brother worked: Ethan had understood that Ariia was going rogue and had tried to stop her by putting a vocal-activated-block, so Ariia needs Jerry to get rid of it (‘cause you know, same face, same voice..)
Ariia also used other people to create her weapon. She had someone cut a very powerful explosive in crystal-form into a pretty stone that is mounted into a necklace. Someone else steals Rachel’s son’s musical instrument and puts inside it the device that will trigger the explosive. Ariia’s plan is that the child and his band will play at the Pentagon where all her targets will be reunited, and Rachel will be there wearing the necklace.
Meanwhile, an FBI agent (Billy Bob Thornton) is chasing after them, and special agent for the Air Force Zoe Perez (Rosario Dawson) is learning about Ariia and trying to find a way to stop it.
The FBI agent understands at some point that they are controlled by someone and tells Jerry about the explosive, before sacrificing himself to give him way to escape. Jerry understands that Rachel and her son will unknowingly activate it and rushes to stop it. When he finally enters the room where all those important people are reunited, where the children are already playing their music, and he sees Rachel running towards her son, he understands he could never make it in time so tries to stop it in the only quick way he can think of. He had the Fbi agent’s gun and was wearing a guard’s uniform (after he was of course able to win a fight against a trained guard... and apparently stopped to wear his uniform even though he was in hurry...) so now he shoots in the air. Everybody stops what they are doing, and three armed men shoot Jerry down. It was a real hero scene, I liked the scene when he fired his weapon knowing what would happen to him because it was the only way, and I was sorry that he had to die, but honestly it would have made more sense if he had died, but at the end we see him receiving a medal ( so his father will finally be proud of him :-/ ) and he’s well, up and about, with only an arm in a sling. Three men shot him and he’ s fine... :-/
Perez and a major had managed to ‘kill’ Ariia by removing her memory pieces and hit it in the big-circular-eye-thing-head ... which was rather disappointing. Couldn’t they think of it sooner? How to stop a machine: take away the power, dismantle it, break it into pieces..
The ending scene was even annoying: it was supposed to be the happy ending :-/
Jerry shows up at Rachel’s home for her son’s birthday with a gift for him - because he remembered, what a good man - and they look at each other in ‘that’ way to let us know that a romance is beginning... how stupid. They know nothing of each other, and men had done stranger things than remembering a date in order to impress a girl..
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