Echelon Conspiracy (2009)

User Rating:

5.7/10   

Director:

Greg Marcks

Writers (WGA):

Michael Nitsberg (screenplay) and
Kevin Elders (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

12 March 2009 (Kazakhstan)

Genre:

Action | Mystery | Thriller

Tagline:

Security comes at a price...

Plot:

At first, the strange phone messages promised great wealth. Soon, though, government agents pursue the young engineer receiving them around the world.

Plot Keywords:

Casino | Czech Republic | Security Camera | Echelon | Standoff

Cast

Shane West	...	Max Peterson
Edward Burns	...	John Reed
Ving Rhames	...	Agent Dave Grant
Jonathan Pryce	...	Mueller
Tamara Feldman	...	Kamila
Yuriy Kutsenko	...	Russian General
Sergey Gubanov	...	Yuri Malanin
Martin Sheen	...	Raymond Burke
Ilan Goodman	...	Dennis
Todd Jensen	...	Agent Fletcher
Steven Elder	...	Charles
Sandra De Sousa	...	Female Casino Tech
Greg Donaldson	...	Casino Tech
Andrea Enright	...	NSA Tech #2
Trevor White	...	Paul Spencer

Also Known As:

The Gift (Australia) (DVD title) (USA) (working title)
The Conspiracy (Singapore: English title)

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense violence and action, some sexuality and brief language.

Runtime:

105 min

Country:

USA

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

USA:PG-13 (certificate #44815) | South Korea:15 | Singapore:PG | Philippines:R-13 (MTRCB) | Netherlands:16 | Germany:16

Filming Locations:

Bangkok, Thailand

Company:

After Dark Films

Goofs:

Continuity: During the chase scene in Moscow, the yellow van's rear passenger tail-light changes back and forth between working and not working.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "The Rotten Tomatoes Show: Miss March/Race to Witch Mountain/Sunshine Cleaning (#1.3)" (2009)

Eagle Eye on the cheap

And that's not necessarily a bad thing. After all, let's not pretend Eagle eye was particularly original. It was essentially a warmed over version of Enemy Of The State which was probably based on some other movie I've never seen. Basically what you've got is you're super paranoid information state super computer run amok strategy here. And for the budget it actually works pretty well. The budget is far from shoe-string, but you're not going to see a national deficit's worth of special effects like you did in the two aforementioned films. Let's just all be happy this film proves that there is something that Michael Bay CAN'T get his hands on (and more than like ruin...Friday the 13th,anyone?), shall we?

The performances are all fine if not somewhat forgettable. Ving Rames succeeded once again in annoying the crap out of me, but that's nothing new. Martin Sheen is an amazingly easy replacement for Jon Voigt (who played essentially the same character in Enemy Of The State). You know, the somewhat power mad head of any given 3 letter intelligence organization (CIA, FBI, FSB, KGB, CBS, etc.) who realizes the error of his ways after everything heads south. Well...maybe not so much for Sheen, but what do you expect? The guy takes the weirdest projects. In any event, Tamara Feldman does fine as the amazingly hot but somewhat pointless love interest/double agent/tougher-than-she-looks chick. If I had one major complaint about the whole thing, it's got to be the simply massive suspension of disbelief required for all but the most hardcore of the tin foil hat crowd. While I too am concerned about the amount of surveillance used by the US government, I am not worried about being tracked by literally everything with a lens. I am well aware that not every single CCTV, traffic, bank, and security camera is accessible by anyone with an internet connection. That's why it's called CCTV...because it's CLOSED CIRCUIT. And since when do Russian hackers have technology that can get the job done better than a multi-billion dollar agency like the NSA? Whatever. It's still not a bad way to kill 100 minutes of your life. Could've used a bigger budget, but it does fine with what it has. Now if I could just figure out who's dumb enough to do anything a text message tells them I'll be set.