Movie Review: 'Eye in the Sky'
By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio 1060
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Eye in the Sky puts you there.
You're a military officer conducting drone warfare in a foreign nation and you've tracked down suspected terrorists you've been pursuing for years in Kenya.
The mission to capture escalates into a kill mission when the high-tech surveillance equipment you're using reveals that two of the jihadist terrorists are preparing for an imminent suicide attack that will surely result in the loss of multiple innocent lives.
But at exactly the point when you intend to direct the drone pilots to release missiles onto the roof of the house under surveillance and thus take down the leaders of a terrorist network, a nine-year-old girl sets up a stand in front of the house where she is selling loaves of bread to local neighbors and obviously intends to stay there until all her loaves have been sold.
What to do:
If the missiles strike now, the intended suicide bombing will be short-circuited and lives will be saved, but the cost will be at least one innocent life.
And although participants may think they are sacrificing this one life for the "greater good," think about what the subsequent propaganda machine will do with that outcome, to say nothing of the notion that dropping bombs on innocent people tends to create future terrorists.
But if the strike is cancelled or postponed, thus sparing the child's life, many other lives will be lost.
You could argue about this agonizing ethical dilemma from at least two directions – each of which involves the inevitability of civilian casualties -- and that's what happens in this intense and provocative suspense thriller involving a territorial dispute over the implications of modern warfare, as the people in charge attempt to both reach their goals and escape culpability if things go south.
Yes, Eye in the Sky could just as aptly have been called Game of Drones.
Helen Mirren plays the commanding officer, Colonel Katherine Powell, who leads the anti-terrorism team in an underground bunker in Nairobi and oversees the operation as a more efficient way of battling terrorism than the "boots on the ground" approach.
She and her staff find themselves frantically calculating collateral damage estimates as they argue up and down the chain of command not only in Kenya but in the U.S. and U.K. as well.
The late Alan Rickman, in his penultimate role, plays a lieutenant-general, while Aaron Paul is the conflicted drone pilot who will, if and when the order comes, actually squeeze the trigger and "erase" the targets.
The solid script by British screenwriter Guy Hibbert for South African director Gavin Hood (A Reasonable Man, Tsotsi, Rendition, Ender's Game, X-Men Origins: Wolverine) -- who just happens to be an ex-soldier and thus knows the terrain – unfolds in approximately real-time and asks questions while making it clear that there are no easy answers, only life-or-death decisions, as it lays out the international dispute that ensues as the highest powers in the U.S. and British governments debate whether or not they should take immediate action.
It's a complex moral and political debate and a surefire conversation starter that keeps us on the edge of our seats as it ratchets up the tension.
So we'll spy on 3 stars out of 4 for a taut and thoughtful thriller. Eye in the Sky is a nifty and knowing nail-biter.
