EAGLE EYE, a cautionary thriller about the tyranny of technology, relies heavily on electronic devices and quite a few contrived devices for its storyline. Shia LaBeouf, miming an underweight John Cusack, stars as Jerry Shaw, the dark sheep of his family. His twin brother's an overachiever, working at the Pentagon, while Jerry works in a photocopying shop, which makes it all the more unusual when he unexpectedly finds nearly $750,000 deposited in his bank account and his flat crammed with military hardware and bomb-making materials.

Only a mysterious female voice (Julianne Moore) providing escape-and-evasion instructions on his mobile phone is keeping Jerry from the clutches of the FBI, while a plucky single mother (Michelle Monaghan) is apparently also receiving calls telling her that if she doesn't help Jerry her young son, Sam (Cameron Boyce), will be killed.

The FBI, represented by Billy Bob Thornton in the same way that Demi Moore once played a GI soldier, believes Jerry to be an enemy of the state and what follows is a hyperactive mish-mash of recent conspiracy-theory thrillers, topped off with a dash of Fugitive-style man-on-the-run antics and a bit of Enemy Of The State hi-tech surveillance suspicion.

The voice can change traffic lights, flash directions on billboards, detonate explosions and even make trains run backwards Anything's possible. And when anything's possible, suspense tends to be lessened rather than heightened.

Eagle Eye teams LaBeouf back with director DJ Caruso, their first collaboration since last year's hit Disturbia. The trouble is that the plot is so ludicrous that it is almost impossible to stay immersed in the action, and so fast that it seems written without spaces between words.

This isn't just a chase but a combined foxhunt, steeplechase and demolition derby. Between LaBeouf's patented loser character and the ear-wrecking, overdirected action-porn where people wince and shriek like a Chihuahua on a roller coaster, Eagle Eye could easily pass for a Michael Bay film. All we need is a cameo from one of the Transformers' vicious Scalextric vehicles.

This is a cluttered movie with a lot of distractions such as character back stories, Shia's unlikely facial hair, hyper-paranoia about cyber-terrorists, the world's low opinion of America, blasting guns and dexterous car chases. Even if the film's über computer Ariel got together with HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy's Deep Thought, they could crash their hard drives working out what is going on in Eagle Eye.

LaBeouf has become a hot commodity in Hollywood but in his first grown-up role, Eagle Eye still makes him look like a lost generic stick figure trapped in the middle of exclamatory big-screen spectacle.

He doesn't exactly cut a commanding figure. And when Monaghan, a decade his senior, finally kisses him, you half expect her to slip him some lunch money and send him back to school. OK, this isn't Hamlet with hardware, or even Neil LaBute with a BlackBerry – it's just a big piece of popcorn paranoia. Still, when it comes to justifying his rising visibility, it doesn't seem unfair to ask: Where's LaBeouf?

• On general release from Friday