First Hit: I was engaged early on but as the film went on it became less plausible and interesting.
Shia LaBeouf plays Jerry Shaw who appears to be an intelligent loner who has a slacker career working as a copy associate at a copy store.
He cannot make his boarding room payments but one day, after the funeral of his twin brother, he finds $750,000 dollars in his bank account and as he walks disillusion into his boarding house room it is filled with boxes of weapons and explosive devices and materials.
While opening some of the containers he receives a telephone call from a woman who says the FBI will be there in 30 seconds he must leave immediately. He is confused and doesn't know why or how he got this call. But within 30 seconds the FBI break into his room and arrest him. While questioning him, he is allowed to make a phone call and as he dials, the woman’s voice comes on the phone again and says lie down on the floor in 14 seconds.
A few moments later a crane sweeps through the room and creates a way for him to escape. A sign across the street flashes “Jerry jump”. This time he follows the instructions from the phone woman’s voice and jumps.
This opening sequence is followed by another sequence with Rachel Holloman (played by Michelle Monaghan) who receives a phone call that if she is to see her son alive again she must walk to the end of a block and get into a car. These two end up together and are linked but they don’t know why.
The mystery in the film is who the mystery voice on the phone is; what does she want, why is she doing this, and how does she see, control, and know everything about them? The set up is great but the film lags and gets more convoluted the farther along it goes. This is unfortunate as some of the other characters played by Billy Bob Thornton and Rosario Dawson are never fleshed out to give the film some depth.
Overall: This film starts with a great beginning but settles into a somewhat predictable blandness and is in the end unsatisfying.