Movie Review: Eye in the Sky

Drama/ Thriller

Rated – M

Duration –1 hours 42 mins

Release – March 2016

Director –Gavin Hood

Cast –Helen Mirren, Alan Rickman, Aaron Paul, Barkhad Abdi

Mr Knight

In today’s times with a worldwide war on terror only seeming to escalate, Eye in the Sky forces movie goers to ask themselves if the greater good is the most important thing. The scary thing about these films is that despite its fictional story line, its themes are very close to home.

Helen Mirren leads an impressive cast as Colonel Katherine Powell, a British officer in charge of an important capture mission of number four and five on the terrorist list located in Africa. The movie is set in four different locations with allied nations assisting each other with specific resources to bring in these two high profile terrorists to answer for their crimes.

Alan Rickman, in his last role before tragically passing away, is engaging as Lt. General Frank Benson, who is Col. Powell’s liaison based in London briefing high profile government officials who are overseeing the operation.

Along with the British Governments involvement, Col. Powell has covert agents in Kenya, the man on the ground being the Somali pirate star from Captain Phillips, Barkhad Abdi (famous for his “Look at me. Look at me. I am the Captain now!”). He was just as brilliant and a fantastic part of the film.

One of Breaking Bad’s lead characters Alan Paul ‘s Jessie Pinkman, plays drone pilot, Steve Watts, based in Las Vegas, and has his finger on the trigger of two hell-fire missiles on what originally starts as a surveillance mission, which soon escalates.

With extra intelligence, Col. Powell discovers these terrorists are planning a possible deadly suicide bombing attack and the option of capture is now out the window and the opportunity to strike instead becomes a priority. Seeming like a no brainer to take out two of the ten most dangerous terrorists in the world, a young girl selling bread walks into the kill zone and brings to question “is one little girls life worth that of a possible 80 other innocent lives from suicide bombers?”

The remainder of the film is tense with each character and others I haven’t mentioned, forced to answer the question of should we strike and is the propaganda war of who looks bad, the bombers for killing innocents, or the military for causing collateral damage, the priority.

The tension gradually built as the situation evolved and each character of importance tended to pass the buck not wanting to make a hard decision and the ones who did want to make a hard decision seemed to care only for what was the immediate issue and not the repercussions.

I found the movie compelling although there were some slow moments. Its theme was most hard hitting with troublesome concepts of what may actually happen in the world with leaders and their military making vital decisions in the war on terror. To bomb or not to bomb for the greater good. That is the question. An intriguing movie. Enjoy. 





 
Mrs Knight

When Helen Mirren is in a film it’s usually a pretty good sign it will be a good one. Eye in the Sky also stars the late actor Alan Rickman and Aaron Paul from Breaking Bad, aka Jesse Pinkman.

Eye in the Sky is about the moral, ethical and legal dilemmas of the military and todays warfare. Helen Mirren is Colonel Katherine Powell, a UK based military officer in command of a top secret drone operation to capture terrorists in Kenya. Powell discovers the targets are planning a suicide bombing and the mission quickly escalates to take them out. Just as American drone pilot Steve Watts (Aaron Paul) is about to engage, a young innocent girl begins to sell bread just outside the building. Close enough for the missile to also strike her, along with the targets inside the building.

This begins an International dilemma escalating to the highest levels of both the US and British government with no one game enough to make the call on what to do. Do they strike, knowing that they may very well take an innocent girl’s life or wait until it’s clear and risk a suicide bombing going ahead, with a possible 80 innocent people dying?

The story couldn’t be more relevant in the world right this minute. It leaves the audience questioning it long after the film, considering what would you do if you were in that decision making position. Just another way to show us the moral and ethical realities of war.

It doesn’t just question if one innocent life lost makes up for 80 innocents saved. It also raises questions from a political perspective of the propaganda war, as one character says “If they kill 80 people, we win the propaganda war. If we kill one child, they do.” Which I found to be a pretty powerful statement.

Overall the film was cleverly put together. It had suspenseful moments and had Mr Knight and I talking about it on our way home. It dealt with some very real content, told from the different perspectives of each character which I found very interesting to watch. The decision making process dragged on for the entire film, with a lot of back and forth which had me a little fidgety but overall I recommend that it’s worth a watch.