Short Review

Greg Marcks’ Echelon Conspiracy, a techno-thriller that taps into fears of the Bush administration’s Big Brother tendencies, arrives just in time to feel outdated. It doesn’t help that the movie is also a hack job that plays like an ABC Family version of the Bourne films. Shane West is Max Peterson, a computer-security expert working in Bangkok, although West’s callowness suggests he’d be better suited as the malt-shop boy in an Andy Hardy picture. Peterson receives a mysterious gift seemingly sent from heaven: a mobile phone that saves his life and wins him millions at the Prague casinos. But is it all connected to a government-sponsored intelligence-gathering network? As dueling feds, Ed Burns and Ving Rhames have a veritable slum-off.