“Eye in the Sky” is an effective and efficient thriller: effective in balancing the actions of people involved in a covert military operation through the short span of a few hours; efficient in using its limited time to ratchet up the tension without wasting any of yours.
While concerned with time, “Eye’s” timely. Given our technological capabilities, we can now obliterate our enemies with drone aircraft hovering in the sky: just a trigger-pull and the drone can unleash Hellfire (the drone’s named missile in the movie) and voila, punk becomes powder. However, there are a lot of political and legal hoops to jump through before getting the clearance to kill. Morals factor into the decisions as well- just because you can, does that mean you should? “Eye” knows how to bring up these salient points without bogging down the drama with debate between “talking heads,” and that’s where the film’s at its most impressive.
Helen Mirren stars as Col. Katherine Powell, a British officer using a drone to seek out and capture a female British Muslim extremist she’s been tracking for years. Receiving an early morning call, Powell learns the extremist has been found in Kenya with her American partner-in-crime. Dispatched to an operations bunker to work jointly with the U.S. to clearly identify their extremist prey before swooping in to capture them, the extremists are momentarily lost when their meeting site is moved to a dwelling inside a Muslim radical-filled marketplace. Using sophisticated remote-controlled surveillance to infiltrate the dwelling from the ground, Powell discovers a darker plan being staged: in an adjacent room, suicide-bomber vests are being built by yet another terrorist. These three terrorists are numbers 2, 3 and 5 on America’s East African kill list and, with the now eminent danger of a suicide-bombing being planned, Powell changes the mission from capture to kill. By using the surveillance drone to wipe out the trio from above with its Hellfire missile cargo, Powell can stop this impending tragedy. However, she first needs clearance to fire before the trio escapes and time is of the essence. Just before clearance can be given, a 9-year old girl moves into the marketplace to sell bread right next to the target dwelling. This new wrinkle causes a ripple.
While Spock thought it logical that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few at the end of “Star Trek II,” “Eye” wrestles with this moral dilemma. Can unleashing Hellfire to wipe out three terrorists before they kill dozens of people in a suicide-bombing scheme justify the collateral damage of knowingly killing a 9-year old girl? While Powell’s superior Lt. General Frank Benson (Alan Rickman in his last film role) juggles the assembled legal and government representatives and assorted red tape to get an answer for approving annihilation, other players in the plan are affected. The American pilot who will pull the trigger on Hellfire (“Breaking Bad’s” Aaron Paul) wants additional assurance that clearance to kill be re-examined before green-lit as the operative on the ground (Barkhad “I’m the captain now” Abdi from “Captain Phillips”) tries to get the girl out of the way without attracting the attention of the surrounding radicals to remove her as a hindrance to Hellfire’s launch.
Along with Mirren’s bunker scenes, Rickman, Paul, and Abdi’s aspects to the operation are deftly juggled by director Gavin Hood (“Ender’s Game”) and, as time ticks away before the terrorists leave their compound, genuine suspense is created while we wait for the word (any word) to be given.
In its story structure and subplots, “Eye” reminded me most of Sidney Lumet’s 1964 film “Fail-Safe.” While “Fail-Safe” dealt with the consequences of our technology leading to potential global catastrophe, “Eye” has the same subject matter but presents it in a microchasm. The facets of “Fail-Safe” are also just as effectively represented in “Eye:” Mirren resembles Henry Fonda in her bunker-setting communications; Rickman reminds us of Walter Matthau’s role in spelling out the scenarios of military tactics; Paul’s pilot proxies for Dan O’ Herlihy’s “Fail-Safe” pilot General Black. In both films, strong acting is showcased in balanced subplots and speaks to the cautious consequences of our advanced abilities. Also, morality’s feet are held to the fire before any decision can be made toward an impending implosion. These points make both films effective, as is the nagging question of how circumstances could change if humans were as cold and calculating as the equipment at their disposal.
“Eye in the Sky” is a small film (its wide release covers a little over 1,000 screens) but, if it’s within your sights, is worth a look.