Review: Eye in the Sky

Eye in the Sky (15)

USA/UK 2016 102 mins Dir: Gavin Hood Cast: Helen Mirren, Alan Rickman, Aaron Paul, Barkhad Abdi, Jeremy Northam, Iain Glen, Monica Dolan

The ever-changing nature of warfare has led to the ever-changing nature of the war movie itself; from early milestones like All Quiet on the Western Front to the authentic, quasi-documentary horror of Saving Private Ryan, cinema has always had to move fast to ensure authenticity and topicality. In recent years, the emergence of drone warfare has led to the likes of Andrew Niccol’s Good Kill starring Ethan Hawke, films that explore the chilling detachment that comes when conflicts are fought not on the frontline but from the other side of the world.

Tsotsi and Ender’s Game director Gavin Hood is now the latest filmmaker to step into this disquieting sub-genre with Eye in the Sky, and the terrific end result is very much the last word on the subject, at least for the time being. Not that the movie is trite enough to deliver what it considers the last word: the triumph of Hood’s powerfully unsettling movie is how it lets the audience make up their own mind as to the morality of 21st century warfare, never fully coming down on one side of the fence or the other.

Expertly keeping multiple plates spinning, it opens on a seemingly innocuous house in Nairobi, outside which an innocent young girl named Alia (Aisha Takow) is spinning a hula hoop. In the first of many brilliantly discombobulating reveals, Hood then undercuts our own sense of security by revealing that a house nearby is the subject of intense drone scrutiny by both the UK and US military, its inhabitants encompassing various ‘most wanted’ terrorist targets. With forthright Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren on typically commanding form) spearheading a ‘capture, not kill’ operation from her remote position in London, we then fan out to take in the operation’s other key players.

Also in London, Powell’s superior officer Lt. General Frank Benson (Alan Rickman in his final on-screen role) attempts to conceal his disdain towards the self-serving politicians observing the screens with him; in Las Vegas, drone operators Lt. Steve Watts (Aaron Paul) and A1C Carrie Gershon (Phoebe Fox) anxiously watch from their God’s eye view; and in Nairobi itself, agent-on-the-ground Jama Farah (Barkhad Abbi) is right in the firing line, utilising (fictional) cameras hidden inside mechanical animals to get inside the house where the drone can’t reach.

What is revealed by Jama’s cameras immediately escalates the urgency of the situation from capture to kill, necessitating the need for an immediate Reaper strike. However, Powell’s desire to eliminate her high-profile targets is repeatedly stymied by the constant need to ‘refer up’ and get the kill order sanctioned, the ensuring line of red tape taking in Iain Glen’s foreign secretary, interrupted on the toilet amidst a bout of food poisoning, and the somewhat stereotypically brash US Secretary of State, interrupting his ping pong game in Singapore to tell the Brits to get on with the job. It’s a skilfully edited and utterly engrossing tapestry, one that amplifies the somewhat farcical chain of command lurking behind the counter-measures designed to keep the free world safe. Particularly effective is Jeremy Northam’s sweaty minister Brian Woodale who makes all kinds of noises but balks at the very moment where he needs give authorisation for the strike itself.

Resisting glibness or simplistic portrayals, Hood and screenwriter Guy Hibbert carefully draw the battle lines between the experienced military personnel who are compelled to the pull the trigger, and the duplicitous politicos more concerned with how the ensuing propaganda war might impact on their own image. When the situation escalates around the halfway point the moral implications become even more troubling, the various disconnected characters attempting to weigh up the possibility of collateral damage against that of an even more devastating terrorist attack in future.

These are themes that are firmly entrenched in war movies but they’re given a freshness here courtesy of Hood’s pacy direction, the sensibly ambivalent script and a clutch of outstanding central performances. With Mirren’s no-nonsense chief never afraid of sacrificing sympathy in favour of duty, the moral heart of the piece, poignantly, falls to the late, lamented Rickman who in his final moments imparts some haunting words of wisdom to Dolan’s ineffectual politician. The scene is a powerful testament to Rickman’s screen presence, in particular his ability to say so much through stillness; and indeed, the movie as a whole is an outstanding epitaph to an outstanding career. Disconcerting, thought-provoking and relentlessly tense, it’s destined to linger in the mind.