The race-against-time thriller “Eagle Eye” reunites actor Shia LaBeouf, director D.J. Caruso and executive producer Steven Spielberg for the first time since their sleeper hit “Disturbia.”

In “Eagle Eye,” Jerry Shaw (LaBeouf) and Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan) are two strangers thrown together by a mysterious phone call from a woman they have never met. Threatening their lives and their family, she pushes Jerry and Rachel into a series of increasingly dangerous situationsusing the technology of everyday lifeto track and control their every move. As the situation escalates, these two ordinary people become the country's most wanted fugitives, who must now work together to discover what is really happening. Fightingfor their lives, they become pawns of a faceless enemy who seems to have limitless power to manipulateeverything they do.

DreamWorks Pictures Presents A Kurtzman/Orci Production A D.J. Caruso Film “Eagle Eye” starring Shia LaBeouf, Michelle Monaghan, Rosario Dawson, Michael Chiklis, Anthony Mackie and Billy Bob Thornton. The film is directed by D. J. Caruso. Story by Dan McDermott. Screenplay by John Glenn & Travis Adam Wright and Hillary Seitz and Dan McDermott. The film is produced by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Patrick Crowley. The executive producers are Steven Spielberg and Edward L. McDonnell. The director of photography is Dariusz Wolski, ASC. The production designer is Tom Sanders. The film is edited by Jim Page. The costume designer is Marie-Sylvie Deveau. The visual effects supervisor is Jim Rygiel. The music is by Brian Tyler. This film has been rated PG-13 for intense sequences of action and violence and for language.

About the Film

At the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Geoff Callister is at the center of a critical decision: whether to bomb an important target, a wanted Afghan terrorist. Without total confirmation of his identity, the President orders the attack to proceed at what appears to be a funeral. The bombing triggers a rise in terrorist animosity against the U.S. from overseas, as well as a possible threat from within. . .

In Chicago, a 23-year-old slacker named Jerry Shaw (Shia LaBeouf), an employee at the local Copy Cabana shop, is suddenly called home – his identical twin brother, Ethan, an Air Force public relations officer and pride of the family, has been killed in a car accident.

Meanwhile, single mom Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan) is sending her 8-year-old son, Sam, off to Washington, D.C., to play trumpet with his school band at the Kennedy Center – their first separation. During a night out with the girls, she receives an odd call on her cell phone: a strange woman telling Rachel to follow her instructions implicitly or Sam – now unexpectedly visible on a wall of TV screens across the street – will die.

Upon his return to Chicago, Jerry finds his normally empty bank account now contains $750,000, and his sparsely furnished apartment is crammed with do-it-yourself terrorist supplies. He, too, receives a call from the same woman, warning him to run or he’ll be arrested. Before he can leave, he is apprehended.

In an FBI interrogation room, Agent Thomas Morgan (Billy Bob Thornton) questions the young man, who insists he has been framed. When he is left alone in an office, Jerry is once again contacted by the mysterious woman, who frees him by swinging a nearby construction crane to crash through the window and instructs him to jump.

He is led by the woman to a Porsche Cayenne – where Rachel, whom he has never met, is waiting for him. Suspicious of each other from the start, they soon realize they are both at the mercy of this strangely disembodied voice, who is tracking their every move, and has seemingly limitless control over their fates.

About the Production

The idea for “Eagle Eye” was hatched several years ago from the mind of executive producer Steven Spielberg. “Steven’s initial concept focused on the idea that technology is everywhere,” says co-producer Pete Chiarelli. “It’s all around us – what would happen if it turned against you? What if the technology that surrounds us, that we love and depend on, suddenly was used on us in ways that could cause harm and was completely out of our control?”

“Steven always wanted people to walk out of the theater and turn off their cell phones and BlackBerrys, because they were so scared,” writer/producer Alex Kurtzman recalls – much in the way audiences feared swimming in the ocean after they saw Spielberg’s summer blockbuster “Jaws” in 1975.

The story was in development for several years, because at the time Spielberg first conceived the idea, “he thought that it would seem too much like science fiction,” Kurtzman adds. “It would have stretched credibility because the technology wasn’t yet as integrated into our society as it is today.”

In early 2006, Spielberg brought the project to Kurtzman and his writing partner, Robert Orci, the creative team behind “Mission: Impossible III,” the upcoming “Star Trek” and another Spielberg project, “Transformers” and its upcoming sequel, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.”

“The trick now was figuring out a way into the story,” says Kurtzman, “making a film that would be more than simply an action picture with chase scenes and explosions. Ultimately, it was about bringing a human perspective to the whole story.”

The story is about two strangers who are thrown together, framed for crimes they didn’t commit, who are fighting for their lives while trying to prove their innocence. Its non-stop suspense is driven like a speeding locomotive as Jerry and Rachel become the pawns of a faceless enemy who seems to have limitless power to manipulate everything they do.

Such an approach, Kurtzman notes, “makes the film timeless, because the characters could be in any time period, and the audience can relate to them no matter when or where they’re from. They’re just ordinary people thrown into a totally extraordinary circumstance way beyond their control, forced to do things they don’t understand and have to find out why they have been chosen as the movie goes along – which the audience does along with them.”

“Eagle Eye” marks Kurtzman’s and Orci’s first foray into producing. “It’s been amazing to see this story evolve from an idea Steven brought to us two years ago. Watching the expanding scope of this movie has been tremendous.”

The film’s star, Shia LaBeouf, expresses similar feelings. “I’ve never been this close to the formation of an entire project. The writing and rewriting is all very new to me. It’s like raising a puppy. There’s a lot of pride attached, especially when you’re working with friends and everyone’s rooting for each other.”

While Spielberg originally intended to direct the film himself, he eventually changed course to focus on other projects, especially the large-scale action adventure “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.” Meanwhile, director D.J. Caruso was shooting his 2007 hit, “Disturbia,” for Spielberg’s DreamWorks SKG. “I showed him the rough cut of ‘Disturbia,’ and he said, ‘You know, we have something for you.’ I read the script, and I could see why, when he initially thought of the idea, it was way ahead of its time. I loved it immediately.”

For many young directors, shooting a film with a master like Spielberg looking over your shoulder might seem a little intimidating. “There’s always the added pressure of knowing this was a story Steven had gestating up in his brain for several years,” Caruso notes. “But he really made me feel at ease. He told me it was important that a filmmaker make every project his own. He said ‘I want you to take this idea and make it yours.’ He trusted me to go in there and do it and make it my own, and still honor his story. I’ve never enjoyed a more fruitful collaboration.”

With a story as complex as “Eagle Eye,” it was important to have a director who could bring balance to a film that featured not only intense action, but rich characters. “D.J. brings an incredible sense of history to a project like this,” notes executive producer Edward L. McDonnell. “He’s worked in a variety of genres already. This is more than just a character piece, or just an action piece, it has complexity in the storytelling. His ability to streamline a story for us, to make it understandable and accessible, comes from his previous experience.”

“D.J. has shot so much over his life as a director as he came up through the ranks,” adds co-producer Chiarelli. “It’s great for us, because we got to take advantage of somebody who had so much experience who knew what he was doing and made the movie look great, made the action huge, but still managed to pull amazing performances out of the actors.”

Cast and Characters

Shia LaBeouf plays Jerry Shaw, the less accomplished half of a set of identical twins. “When we first meet him, he’s in the thick of what his life has become,” LaBeouf explains. “He’s an underachiever in a family of seeming overachievers. His twin brother was this overachieving perfectionist, who had a real easy way with life and was extremely bright, efficient, and dependable and secure – everything Jerry is not.”

Jerry had, much to the chagrin of his demanding father, left Stanford to travel and is, at present, working at a low-end copy store. “He’s the sort of guy who exercises his freedom and doesn’t necessarily believe that you need to go to college and do what everyone in society says you need to do,” notes Caruso. “He’s exploring himself right now and trying to learn what he wants to do with his life – he’s the complete opposite of his twin brother.”

An average guy, Jerry is suddenly forced to develop a great deal of character – and fast. “He’s forced to confront some things in his life over the course of the movie – which takes place over about a day and a half – that makes him grow from being a kid to being a man,” says Chiarelli.

The filmmakers certainly felt the character and their star shared such everyman qualities. “At the time D.J. first mentioned the project to me, we were in Germany doing promotions for ‘Disturbia,’” recalls LaBeouf, who was about to tackle two other Spielberg projects – “Transformers” and “Indiana Jones.”

The role is LaBeouf’s first truly adult portrayal. “It’s been great to see his progression,” Caruso says. “He was 19 when we started ‘Disturbia,’ and now he’s 21. I look at that film, then I look at ‘Transformers,’ and now ‘Eagle Eye,’ and I realize they were all only a year or so apart in his life, but he looks five or six years older. I have him playing a 23-year-old and here he is, a mature young man who, at certain times in the movie has discussions with a young mother in her early 30s about what she should do and how important life is. I think that’s amazing for someone like Shia, who a year ago was playing a teenager. He is definitely mature beyond his years.”

“I think this is a defining role for Shia,” adds producer Patrick Crowley. “It marks his emergence as a leading man.”

LaBeouf also won over his co-star. “I love Shia,” says Michelle Monaghan “He’s just a dynamite actor and so passionate about his work; I respect him deeply and we had a lot of fun together.”

Of course, having an actor and director who had already worked together was an added benefit. “They have a shorthand,” says Chiarelli. “They’re like an old married couple. They’ll just look at each other, like, ‘I want a take that’s more like. . . .,’ and Shia would nod, like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.’ Nobody else quite understood them in the same way.”

Adds LaBeouf, “We’d communicate with a finger point or a hand movement, and then we’d be back to the scene again.”

Jerry’s counterpart, Rachel, is a single mom with an ex-husband who spends some time with his son, but has left all of the real responsibilities of parenting to Rachel. “She’s just trying to get through her day-to-day life with her son while working hard,” Monaghan explains.

Rachel sends her eight-year-old son, Sam, off on a trip to Washington, and finally has a day off, which includes a night out with the girls at a bar. But the day off turns into the worst day off ever, notes Monaghan. “She steps out of the bar to take a phone call she thinks is from her son but the voice on the other end is a woman, who asks ‘What would you do to save your son’s life?’ I obviously have no idea what she’s talking about, and am completely bewildered.”

Then she is instructed to look up at the TV monitors in a store across the street, and sees live surveillance footage of Sam on the train. “The idea of seeing your child on a train, where you thought he was safe and you suddenly realize he’s not, is just chilling,” the actress says.

The producers were looking for an actress who could be both sweet and tough, as needed, and Monaghan fit the bill. “We had worked with her on ‘Mission: Impossible III,’ and we just found that she had all the qualities that we needed Rachel to be,” says Kurtzman. “We also had a sense of what her voice was like, which helped us a lot. Plus, she was very honest about the things that she liked and what she wanted to adjust, something we find invaluable when we want to tailor the voice precisely to the performer.”

Rachel’s resolve to do what it takes to protect Sam from disaster puts her in spots which, like the Secretary of Defense (Michael Chiklis) in the film’s opening, require her to choose between two terrible options. “It’s a very helpless situation for her,” Caruso comments, adding, “I wouldn’t mess with a mother who has been separated from her kid.”

When Jerry and Rachel meet for the first time, they immediately think the other is the source of their troubles and begin battling for their freedom. “It’s a story about people who bring certain assumptions into a situation,” says Kurtzman. “But they’re not necessarily right about what they perceive.”