While on a business trip in Russia, young computer technician Max Peterson (West) receives a high-tech cell phone in the mail that dispenses advice via anonymous text messages. After initially writing the phone off as a promotional gift from the hotel, Peterson is saved from boarding a doomed airplane thanks to the warnings of the inexplicably omniscient device, and so he’s not entirely reluctant to try out its suggestions at a local casino. Naturally, this attracts the uneasy attentions of the casino’s security chief (Ed Burns), a burly FBI agent (Ving Rhames), the head of the NSA (Martin Sheen), and a beautiful, mysterious woman. Soon enough, the phone starts making death threats to Peterson and a sniper appears on the roof across from his hotel room. Rather than the over-the-top action scenarios of EAGLE EYE, its closest contemporary, ECHELON CONSPIRACY grounds most of its tension in behind-closed-doors plausibility.
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