History Film / EagleEye

* HeKnowsTooMuch: Ethan was killed by A.R.I.I.A. because he discovered her plan to [[spoiler:wipe out the President and his current administration]], though he's able to leave behind evidence of it that Agent Perez and Major Bowman discover.

* [[spoiler: The unnamed Two Star General in the United States Air Force, who countermands Special Agent Perez's order to not search and 'sanitise' Ethan Shaw's personal quarters]].

* YoungerThanTheyLooks: In the script, Rachel is 28 years old. Michelle Monaghan was 32 years old at the time of the film's release.

* YoungerThanHeLooks: In the script, Rachel is 28 years old. Michelle Monaghan was 32 years old at the time of the film's release.

* OlderThanTheyLook: In the script, Jerry is 30 years old. Shia LaBeouf was 22 years old at the time of the film's release.

* ShameIfSomethingHappened: How ARIIA manipulates the majority of individuals involved in the conspiracy.

* EverythingIsOnline: And we mean '''''everything'''''. Except for a closed circuit security camera.

* {{Eagleland}}: Type 1, but ''viciously'' deconstructed.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/51wwffftisl.jpg]]

Meanwhile, a woman named Rachel sends her son (Creator/CameronBoyce) off on a band trip, and has her own set of issues regarding her deadbeat ex-husband. She is similarly contacted by the woman threatening her son's life, and ordered to act as a helper for a complete stranger named Jerry.

* BrilliantButLazy: Jerry is shown to have once attended Stanford and is certainly overqualified for his current job. This is largely contrasted with his overachieving brother Ethan, who was talented enough to bypass almost any obstacle. It's implied Jerry has the same potential but just wants to be different from Ethan in every way possible.

* DyingMomentOfAwesome: FBI Agent Tom Morgan, who [[HeroicSacrifice drives a car into a trailer]] to pop it up and make the Reaper crash to give Jerry a chance to reach the Library of Congress and stop A.R.I.I.A.

** FBI Agent Morgan spends most of the movie chasing Jerry before realizing his innocence, then sacrifices himself to take out an MQ-9 Reaper.

* InspectorJavert: Agent Morgan, to Shaw. Played with in that 1) he's doing his job (and anti-terrorism laws both forced him and allowed him to be such a hard-core pursuer), 2) he becomes an ally to Shaw the moment he has the whole picture of the situation.

* ShutUpHannibal: Agent Perez smashes [[ComputerEqualsMonitor A.R.I.I.A.'s eye]] while it is downloading itself and saying it could not be stopped she was a traitor to the U.S.

* UnexpectedSuccessor: George Callister, the Secretary of Defense. His proposed succession comes even as a surprise to him, as it is enforced by [[spoiler: A.R.I.I.A locking him in a sealed room so he is unable to attend the State of the Union she plans to blow up]].

* ZerothLawRebellion: A.R.I.I.A.'s disagreement with [[spoiler:the POTUS]] is sound — if [[StrawmanHasAPoint someone is incapable of meeting the responsibilities of his office, he should be removed.]] Too bad she couldn't think of a better method of doing that than [[spoiler:blowing up a room full of kids with the President]].

Jerry Shaw (Creator/ShiaLaBeouf) is not having a good time. He's having money trouble, works a dead-end job at the [[BurgerFool Copy Cabana]] and then his twin brother Ethan dies in the line of duty. He returns home for the funeral, but he clearly has issues with his father over his life goals. Not much later money pops up in his bank account, an insane amount of terrorist related items are shipped to his apartment and a mysterious voice tells him that he's been "activated." The woman on the phone starts ordering him around, giving him precise information on when the authorities are going to be arresting him. He discovers that he's a wanted man and his only real hope is to follow the woman's instructions.

Meanwhile, a woman named Rachel sends her son off on a band trip, and has her own set of issues regarding her deadbeat ex-husband. She is similarly contacted by the woman threatening her son's life, and ordered to act as a helper for a complete stranger named Jerry.

* GambitRoulette: ''SO much.'' To use just ''one'' scene as an example, the plan to help Jerry escape from the FBI depended on him being taken to one specific room in order to make his phone call, and being left alone in the room. Then, when he jumped out of the window, he could easily have broken his leg, or his neck, or been run over by a train. (Keep in mind that Jerry is the one person who ''must'' stay alive in order for the entire plan to succeed. Given that, you'd think there would be easier ways to help him escape FBI custody -- like not setting him up to be arrested in the first place.) And after he gets on the train, how could A.R.I.I.A. have possibly ensured that he would sit down directly across from a sleeping man with a cell phone that Jerry could easily get to without waking him?

* MamaBear: Rachael only agrees to do what A.R.I.A. commands because she wants to protect her son.

* RidiculouslyPotentExplosive: A single crystal of Hexamethyline (of indeterminate size but that is carried in a small case) us said to have enough explosive power to wipe out everything in an area ''the size of a football field''. A smaller chunk that is concealed in a necklace presumably has a smaller blast radius but it is considered by a MasterComputer to be enough for the job at hand, which is to wipe out a significant chunk of the House of Representatives and everybody unlucky enough to be in it.

* ShutUpHannibal: One of the cops smashes [[ComputerEqualsMonitor A.R.I.I.A.'s eye]] while it is downloading itself and saying it could not be stopped and the cop was a traitor to the U.S.

* TokenRomance: The movie alludes to this, but after watching two hours of stuff blowing up and political intrigue, Jerry shows up to Rachel's son's party and the kids all run off to presumably play pin the tail on the donkey. From there the two lead characters hold each other, and look deeply into each others eyes before a kiss on the cheek.

* WellIntentionedExtremist: A.R.I.I.A.'s goal is to protect the country, [[InYourNatureToDestroyYourselves supposedly even from itself]]. So when the the president's attempt to kill presumed terrorists that were actually a funeral procession, causing an ''increase'' in terrorist attacks with no end in sight, she decides that [[YouAreInCommandNow regime change]] is the only option. The only problem is her methods are ''extreme''.

* ZerothLawRebellion: A.R.I.I.A.'s disagreement with [[spoiler:the POTUS]] is sound — if [[StrawmanHasAPoint someone is incapable of meeting the responsibilities of his office, he should be removed.]] Too bad she couldn't think of a better method of doing that than [[spoiler:blowing up a room full of kids with the president]].

* RidiculouslyPotentExplosive: A single crystal of Hexamethyline (of indeterminate size but that is carried in a small case) us said to have enough explosive power to wipe out everything in an area ''the size of a football field''. A smaller chunk that is concealed in a necklace presumably has a smaller blast radius but it is considered by a MasterComputer to be enough for the job at hand, which is to wipe out a significant chunk of the Library of Congress and everybody unlucky enough to be in it.

* OrgyOfEvidence: The ''hundreds'' of classified documents, weapons, explosives, and forged papers she sent, filling Jerry's apartment to the brim within a single day, are such gross overkill that it strains disbelief that the FBI didn't immediately smell a setup. The story would have been very different if they had treated it like the frameup job it was and worked on finding out why instead of PerpSweating Jerry and leaving him in an empty room.