‘Eye in the Sky’ a pulse-pounding lesson in morality
March 30, 2016 - 9:18 am
It’s the most pulse-pounding footage you’ll ever see of a 9-year-old girl trying to sell bread.
“Eye in the Sky” offers a ripped-from-the-headlines look at drone warfare as most of its participants argue the legalities and rules of engagement, as well as the political fallout, of their actions from thousands of miles away.
Most movingly, though, the tense thriller offers a final chance to enjoy the greatness of Alan Rickman, who died Jan. 14 after battling cancer.
As Lieutenant General Frank Benson, Rickman oversees Col. Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren), who’s about to witness the culmination of her six-year mission to bring a British national-turned-terrorist to justice. But first, he has to buy a baby doll as a gift, leave a message describing said doll, then be dismayed that he chose poorly. “I bought a Time to Sleep doll when I should have bought a Baby Moves. Apparently there’s an important difference,” Rickman’s Benson drolly tells an aide.
Not only do those scenes represent “Eye in the Sky’s” sole moments of levity, they bring a touch of humanity and mundanity to a film that often feels like a lesson in morality.
On the morning she learns one of her top assets has been murdered, Col. Powell has the leaders of the offending terror cell under surveillance in Kenya. For that, she can thank a drone piloted by Steve Watts (“Breaking Bad’s” Aaron Paul) out of Creech Air Force Base in Indian Springs.
Unlike last year’s Ethan Hawke drone drama “Good Kill,” which shows the toll long-distance warfare can take on a pilot, “Eye in the Sky” mentions the base by name. (Unlike “Good Kill,” “Eye in the Sky” never filmed in Las Vegas as the entire production was headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa.)
What begins as a simple capture operation spirals out of control when the terrorists, three of whom rank in the top 10 on the East Africa most-wanted list, unexpectedly leave the suburban neighborhood where military forces are in position. The soldiers can’t launch a ground assault on the new location because a hostile militia controls the neighborhood, so Col. Powell presents a strike from Watts’ drone as the best method to “prosecute the target.”
From there, “Eye in the Sky” is a series of buck-passings, referring-ups and escalating complications that, at times, borders on the darkly comical.
In addition to the aforementioned British national, one of the terrorists is originally from Chicago. High-quality real-time video from a tiny drone disguised as a beetle shows suicide bomb vests being assembled inside their new compound. And, most problematically, a young girl named Alia (Aisha Takow), whom we’d previously seen puzzling over her math homework and joyfully playing with her new hula hoop, has set up a table on a dusty spot just outside that compound’s walls to sell loaves of her mother’s homemade bread.
The remainder of “Eye in the Sky” is one long argument over whether preventing the possible deaths of dozens of victims, assuming those suicide vests do their job, is worth the near-certain death of one adorable little girl.
Directed by Gavin Hood (“Ender’s Game”) from a script by BAFTA-winning writer Guy Hibbert, “Eye in the Sky” has the feel of one of those dinner table debates from CBS’ “Blue Bloods” writ large. But because its principals are never in the same room — in some cases, they aren’t even on the same continent — the whole thing suffers from a sense of detachment. Even actors as talented as Rickman, Mirren and Paul need something more giving than a video screen with which to interact.
Still, though, as manipulative as it is to have a multinational military mission come to a grinding halt because of the appearance of one little girl, it’s almost impossible to not root for Alia to sell that bread and get the heck out of that marketplace.
Since so much of the public consciousness is still wrapped up in “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” it’s worth noting that “Eye in the Sky” had the good sense to set its action in Nairobi, Kenya, instead of “Dawn of Justice’s” ridiculous sounding “Nairomi, Africa.” It’s harder to tell whether Nairomi sounds more like a typo or a long-lost member of the Judds.
Also, after all the cacophony of that superstuffed superhero movie, it’s refreshing to see that audiences still can find themselves wrapped up in an intimate tale that dares to suggest that every life is precious.
Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com. On Twitter: @life_onthecouch.
REVIEW
Movie: “Eye in the Sky”
Running time: 102 minutes
Rating: R; some violent images and language
Grade: B
Now playing: At multiple locations