Jerry Shaw (Shia LeBeouf) may have his meager little world wired, but someone else has the master list for a larger world in the new thriller "Eagle Eye."

Jerry might be able to con his landlady, sucker his pals into dropping big money at the poker table and travel the world while evading responsibility, but soon life catches up to him.

His successful twin brother dies, and he returns to his apartment to find a lot of incriminating evidence against him -- he's believed to be a terrorist -- and a cell-phone call warning him the FBI is on his trail.

The mysterious call throws him together with a stranger, a young single mother named Rachel (Michelle Monaghan of "Mission Impossible III"), whose young son provides the motivation for her cooperation: The mysterious female voice at the end of the line is threatening his life.

And when this voice talks, you'd better listen. If you hang up your phone, she'll just buzz you through the guy sitting next to you on the train. Or hijack a marquee or a TV set in an electronics store.

Soon, Jerry and Rachel, a couple of ordinary people who have somehow become the country's biggest fugitives, are on the run.

If you think this sounds like a knockoff of "Enemy of the State," you would be right, if you toss in a sprinkle of HAL and splash of "The Fugitive."

Director D.J. Caruso (LeBeouf's "Disturbia") layers a bit of Hitchcock into his Orwellian subtext, as the pair skips around the country (stopping in Indianapolis), evading the FBI as this mysterious offers instruction (and at times help) on evading their would-be captors.

Billy Bob Thornton and Rosario Dawson stand out as FBI agents pursuing Jerry. Thornton and Dawson are play well off each other, with the former doing his best Tommy Lee Jones, barking out lines like "You picked a hell of a time to become useful" with appropriately deadpan sarcastic gusto.

The premise is filtered through current events, and is in some ways an appropriate snapshot of technophobia, and the Big-Bro-is-watching-you mentality, but in the end it just masks a standard, uninspiring action/thriller.

Joe's verdict

In a word: Implausible.

Rating: 2 and a half stars (out of 5)

Rated: PG-13 for intense sequences of action and violence, and for language.

Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Billy Bob Thornton, Rosario Dawson.

Director: D.J. Caruso.