EYE IN THE SKY
Entertainment One Films
Reviewed by: Harvey Karten for Shockya, d-based on Rotten Tomatoes
Grade: B+
Director: Gavin Hood
Written by: Guy Hibbert
Cast: Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul, Alan Rickman, Barkhad Abdi, Jeremy Northam, Iain Glen, Phoebe Fox
Screened at: Park Ave., NYC, 2/24/16
Opens: March 11, 2016
While World War I was raging in Europe in 1914, Americans had hoped to keep out of the action, to maintain a spirit of neutrality. But public opinion in the U.S. turned against Germany when propaganda spread about the inhumane treatment of conquered people by the German army. Ultimately the U.S. entered the war on the side of the France and England. Propaganda is important. Nowadays information technology can be used to get people on our side against the terrorists. As our government often says, it is at least important to win the hearts and minds of the people as it is to win battles militarily. This concept comes up strongly in Gavin Hood’s “Eye in the Sky,” a war drama with comedic touches dealing with this moral issue: should the West, represented by the U.K. and U.S., opt to bomb a compound in Nairobi in order to kill three top-ranking Al-Shabaab terrorists when collateral damage would result in the death of a nine-year-old girl? If the terrorists and the girl are killed, the West could face a propaganda defeat, as the other side would drum up rage among the inhabitants of Nairobi for the killing of this innocent. If on the other hand, the West did not opt to take out the terrorists within a compound, at least two of them would momentarily head into a crowded market with suicide bombs, killing perhaps eighty others. Such wanton homicide might incense the Kenyan people against Al-Shabaab, while the top-level people would go on living and committing their atrocities.
I’m not sure how director Gavin Hood, whose “Ender’s Game” takes up the fight against a genocidal enemy, and writer Guy Hibbert, who wrote that movie’s script, want the audience to root for. Do they want us to favor saving the little girl even at the risk of killing scores of unidentified people in the market place, or with Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren), who has no reservations about collateral damage and favors a bomb release from a drone—the titled eye in the sky? This moral struggle makes the film not only a mini-study of philosophy and psychology, but more important, a nail-biter thriller in which tension comes from the hesitations and even the comic examination of people who are most concerned with covering their own butts by avoiding a decision to let the bombs rip.
Filmed in Capetown, South Africa, writer Guy Hibbert’s home country, “Eye in the Sky” is an “on the home hand, but on the other hand” drama shot in real time on a day in which British and American intelligence locate the presence of top ranking Al-Shabaab terrorists in a Nairobi compound. Military people in a compound near the terrorists’ residence include British Col. Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren), who is determined to arrest an Englishwoman (Lex King) who had joined the terrorists, but when surveillance realizes that the woman is being set up with a suicide bomb, the order to capture is tentatively changed to kill. However, since the decision to kill changes the status quo, Col. Powell must receive the authorization of higher-ups, who include folks in a U.K. room including General Frank Benson (the late Alan Rickman), who favors the military strike despite the possibility of killing the little girl, who is Alia Mo’Allim (Aisha Takow) and is selling bread just outside the building.
Fearful of making the decision, politicians alerted by the general cannot make up their minds, the question passed on to an array of British and American higher-ups including the U.S. Secretary of State, the British Attorney General, the British Foreign Secretary, and even the British Prime Minister. This passing the buck provides for both the tension and the comedy, the diplomats’ hesitations prompting to audience either to support the discussion rather than take overly prompt and potentially dangerous action, or to laugh at their mealy-mouthed weaknesses.
Some fascinating James Bond-like technology is exhibited including not just the drone with its remote pilots, particularly U.S Lt. Steve Watts (Aaron Paul), but also a mechanical fly controlled by a Somali undercover agent (Barkhad Abdi) to get a close look inside the terrorists’ building and some stunning photography by the pilot from thousands of miles away with his finger on the trigger. The lieutenant shows his reluctance to go along with he may consider an immoral order, refusing the colonel’s command to launch the drone and fire the bomb.
“Eye in the Sky” has the remarkable ability to fashion a philosophic debate while at the same time providing the audience with thrills similar to what we experienced in “American Sniper.” The editing is crackerjack—not the usual frantic, sea-sick causing cuts that we’re accustomed to, but sharp cuts from Africa to North America to England, while the special effects make us wonder to what extent such technology really exists—and if it does, how come we have not wiped out all terrorists’ nest by now?
Rated R. 102 minutes. © Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online
Story – B+
Acting – B+
Technical – A-
Overall – B+
