Film: Eye In The Sky
Cast: Helen Mirren, Alan Rickman Aaron Paul Barkhad, Iain Glen,Kim Engelbrecht
Director: Gavin Hood
Gavin Hood’s Eye in the Sky is an imaginative and provocative reconstruction of the grim reality of war and the hard, painful decisions that must be made to avert suicide bombing and collateral damage. Written for the screen by Guy Hibbert, Eye in the Sky is wartime political thriller powerfully acted by a talented cast led by Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman (Harry Potter’s beloved Professor Snape) who passed away in January this year.
To those of us who think collateral damage is a glib euphemism for a dreadful situation, this finely nuanced movie shows it is not. Eye in the Sky is designed to move people to think more deeply about the choices that are made by those that call the shots, meaning, politicians, bureaucrats and military.
The film’s title refers to remote surveillance, the technological equivalent of an omniscient deity which sees and hears everything from afar. Colonel Katherine (Helen Mirren) Powell, a UK-based commanding officer of a top secret drone operation to capture terrorists affiliated to Al Shabaab in Nairobi, Kenya, discovers, through local intel (Barkhad Abdi) and remote surveillance that the targets which include a couple of UK/US turncoats are planning a suicide bombing.
The mission escalates from “capture” to “kill.” The tension ratchets up as the jihadis prepare for the suicide bombing while there is a great deal of dithering by the UK admin and Europe and China where the US and UK honchos are on official engagements (thank goodness for small mercies, the American diplomat gets it, hurrah!). When the affirmative comes in, and the American pilot Steve Watts (Aaron Paul) is about to press the drone button, a small girl plonks herself in the target zone with a basket of loaves for sale, triggering a defiant “No, I am NOT going to do this”.
Watts doesn’t want to be trapped in the nightmare of killing a child, never mind if that child’s life has been endangered in the first place, by her parents who are part of the jihadi cell’s immorality and utter evil program. The jihadis put on their vests, make a video speech and we can see how time is running out as Watt’s refusal to press the button results in an imbroglio which reaches the topmost levels of US and British government.
At the table, where Lt Gen (Rickman) is in session with the UK government, a woman named Angela North (Monica Dolan) time and again, challenges the military about issuing orders from the comfort of an AC office in matters that affect the rights of US/UK nationals. North and the others elsewhere including the British Foreign Secretary (Iain “Game of Thrones” Glen ) are clueless, even stupid, since they disregard the fact that these “nationals” (who have converted to the cause of Islamic jihad) are turncoats posing a clear and present danger to their estranged homelands. Eye in the Sky gives viewers a good understanding and knowledge about the art of war and dare I say it, peace.
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