Eye in the Sky Worth Rediscovering

 

EYE IN THE SKY (2015)

Directed by Gavin Hood

Entertainment One Films, 102 minutes, R (language)

★★★★

 

 

 

Remember the lifeboat ethical dilemma that involved deciding whom to sacrifice to increase the likelihood others in the boat would survive? The grown-up version is the cold calculus upon which military and political decisions rest. Who and how many must die to justify a decision that will potentially save even more lives?

 

I am not usually a fan of military thrillers, but Eye in the Sky is a taut and thoughtful one. It's set in a section of Kenya under the control of El-Shabaab. Not many Westerners or Africans shed tears when El-Shabaab terrorists are killed. Could you push the button that launches a Hellfire missile that would wipe out four leaders and two suicide bomber recruits? Easy call? What if two were British and one an American? Still certain? What if a drone reveals a little girl selling bread outside of the compound in which the bad guys are holed up? High-tech warfare isn’t like the Vietnam War in which pilots released bombs and had little idea of what collateral damage they caused. Now we have the ability to zero in on that little girl’s face. Would you kill her in the name of saving others? Would you make such a decision if it involved one of your loved ones?

 

Eye in the Sky involves a six-year search by Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren) to locate a British woman who was radicalized, married an El-Shabaab commander, and has masterminded terrorist acts throughout the Horn of Africa. A planned capture goes awry when there wasn’t enough time to pull it off, but Powell now knows exactly where the terrorists are located. She wants to pivot from a capture plan to eliminating all six, but there are politics to be considered. Time is of the essence, but she and Lieutenant General Frank Benson (Alan Rickman) need to clear matters with the United States, British Foreign Secretary James Willett (Iain Glen), and Under-Secretary of State for Africa Angela Northman (Monica Dolan). Northman is adamantly opposed, and Willett wants to pass the buck up the chain of command.

 

Turf wars between military leaders and civilian government are commonplace. As viewers, though, we can't root for a strike that would probably kill a smart and utterly vibrant youngster we know as Alia (Aisha Takow). Plus, even if the strike were to be authorized, the military has to thread the needle between at-risk Kenyan personnel on the ground, those doing facial recognition algorithms in Hawaii, blast radius risk assessment officers in Norwood, England, a Reaper drone flying 20,000 feet above the target, and the Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, which targets and fires the missiles. It doesn't help that Second Lieutenant Steve Watts (Aaron Paul) has never done so, or that his shift assistant, A1C Carrie Gershon (Phoebe Fox) is on her first assignment.

 

The subplots within Eye in the Sky are deftly handled. We know, for instance, Benson has a daughter about Alia’s age; we strongly suspect Powell’s motives are pretty evenly split between dispassionate military duty and clinical obsession. The film also suggests that black agents on the ground are being placed in untenable situations by white commanders. As it is, we see Powell browbeats–through intimidation and word planting–a black assessment officer to lower his calculated risk ratio. Queue another dilemma; the decision makers are much older than the men and women who must carry out their orders and live with the consequences. (Add a dose of the Milgram experiment* to the mix.)

 

It may jar you to see Mirren in camo, but she is utterly believable as the icy Powell. In like fashion, Rickman's blend of analytical, forcefulness, and frosty indignation is a poignant reminder of what the acting world lost when he died in 2016. Paul and Fox also shine in roles that require them to be personally vulnerable yet antiseptically efficient. (Milgram redux?) And we should not overlook the note-perfect performance of Barkhad Abdi as Kenyan agent Jama Faral, who must think on his feet then use them to flee for his life. The editing of Megan Gill and the cinematography of Harris Zambarloukos are integral to making the film work. In just 102 minutes we shuttle between eight major characters, numerous secondary ones, and six locations. If either slipped up, the film would not cohere.

 

Would you kill the girl? Allow the terrorists to walk away, though their future actions will probably kill scores of innocents? Hope for a miracle? Eye in the Sky avoids pat solutions and leaves us unsettled. At times it's hard to know which is scarier, El-Shabaab, or the technology that takes the guesswork out of warfare and puts faces on its victims. Unlike pass-the-buck politicians, Eye in the Sky thrusts us into the life boat to confront what we would do. It is a film that I hated to love.

 

Rob Weir

 

* The 1961 Milgram experiments were psychological investigations partly inspired by Nazi soldiers who pleaded they were forced to carry out death camp atrocities. In the experiments, volunteers were badgered to administer electric shocks to other volunteers—actually actors—though the latter appeared to be in distress. Very few refused.