Q:Build a movie plot around this: Who helped install the computer systems years earlier? Max
A:
A young American computer engineer (Shane West as Max Petersen) acquires a mobile phone that receives strange text messages. First they encourage him to miss his flight which he then learns crashed soon after takeoff. Then the messages direct him to buy a certain stock, which he then learns increases by 313%. Next, he is directed to a hotel/casino in Prague to gamble. He first wins one-hundred thousand Euros on a slot machine and then bets the entire amount on a hand of blackjack, getting 21. Both bets are made on the basis of further text messages he receives on his new phone. Max then has an altercation with a beautiful woman (Tamara Feldman) and her jealous boyfriend in the hotel corridor, where he is knocked-out and his mysterious phone is apparently scanned. Max wakes up with the woman, Kamila, smiling above him. He immediately asks her out for a drink.To further his new-found career in gambling, Max enlists the aid of a Russian cabbie/apparent e-gadget enthusiast, Yuri (Sergey Gubanov), who outfits him with an earpiece to wirelessly receive his anonymous and lucrative text messages. His lucky streak continues when he hits the 3 million Euros jackpot on a slot machine but is forced to run away when casino security led by John Reed (Edward Burns) attempts to detain him. This chase is ended by the intervention of FBI Agent Dave Grant (Ving Rhames) who handcuffs Max and interrogates him for information about the phone. Max is frightened, but unable to provide any information.At this point Agent Grant contacts Raymond Burke (Martin Sheen) of the NSA, who is apparently monitoring Max because he is receiving messages from an omniscient communication surveillance computer system known as Echelon. These messages have been responsible for the deaths of several Americans, most recently an IT specialist working in the Pentagon. Burke recently lost a battle to pass a bill in Congress that would allow Echelon to be upgraded by being uploaded into personal computers worldwide. Burke eventually decides that Max knows...