May 25, 2012

D.J. Caruso Has An Eagle Eye for Box Office Hits

by Mallory Potosky | Published December 23, 2008

The year was 2002 when D.J. Caruso, best known at that point for directing episodes of “Dark Angel” and “Smallville,” unleashed The Salton Sea on audiences. The movie, about a drug-addicted police informant, starred Val Kilmer and received mediocre reviews from critics. It was the closest the director came to Hollywood at the time. “Director D.J. Caruso and writer Tony Gayton introduce scenes with images so weird they’re funny to begin with, and then funnier when they’re explained,” wrote Roger Ebert at the time.

In the years following, Caruso directed such Oscar-nominated thespians as Angelina Jolie, Ethan Hawke and Al Pacino in movies like Taking Lives and Two for the Money. Still, the 43-year-old moviemaker hadn’t defined himself in cinema. He continued his television work with directing credits on “Robbery Homicide Division” and “The Shield” until 2007, when his Hitchcock-inspired thriller, Disturbia, took in more than $80 million at the box office.

The movie, starring a then little-known young talent named Shia LaBeouf, was the surprise hit of the summer. So when it came time to cast his latest thriller, Eagle Eye, Caruso reunited with the actor who helped him make his name. The movie, which also stars Michelle Monaghan, Rosario Dawson and Billy Bob Thornton, chases two strangers being controlled by a mysterious female voice that the audience comes to know as Aria. The voice, part of a government experiment, aids the Department of Defense in determining solutions for dealing with threats made against the United States. From the opening scene when the Defense Secretary (played by Michael Chiklis) is alerted to a national security threat to a climactic scene in the halls of government, Eagle Eye plays to the audience’s perception and fear of government and terrorism.

In the weeks leading up to the movie’s DVD release, MM spoke with Caruso about his career, his process and his latest movie.

Mallory Potosky (MM): The concept that Eagle Eye is based on isn’t as far-fetched as people might want to believe. Do you think that’s true?

D.J. Caruso (DC): I think that’s true. I think we definitely push it to the limits, particularly with the intellectual nature or the algorithmic thinking that our protagonist takes. But it’s really interesting to see what’s happening in the government and how, if you’re a person of interest, you can sort of be flagged and your life can be changed and technology can be used against you—particularly the opening scene. About a month and a half after the movie came out, there was a very similar situation that happened in Afghanistan. And you realize, yeah, you can make decisions from halfway across the world, from the bottom of the Pentagon, over whether you’re going to bomb something or not.

These two people [played by LaBeouf and Monaghan] were sort of catapulted into this national security emergency. It’s compelling and probably, obviously, a little bit far-fetched. But this stuff, 95 percent of what happened in the movie, could happen to you and I think that’s frightening.

MM: Because it is so real, because something similar happened in Afghanistan, how did you balance making it entertaining with the telling the truth about threat of cyber terrorism?

DC: Well, I think what you do in trying to make it entertaining is, for me, put [the audience] in the room with those guys when they’re making their decisions. If you go back and watch the movie, you know all the report recommendations [come from Aria], processing this information, telling them not to do what they did. But it’s the world that you live in now and the way that warfare goes and the way that these terrorists are out of our reach and out of our sight. As a filmmaker, it’s my job to put you, the audience, in the room or feel the feeling of the character or the tensions that they’re going through; I think that’s really the best I can do. I never really thought, ‘Well, how does this compare to what happened?” I was always very surprised later on when reading through The New York Times about how accurate our scene was in retrospect.