Guardian
Eye in the Sky
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/apr/17/eye-in-the-sky-review-helen-mirren
Mark Kermode's film of the week
Eye in the Sky review – a morality tale of modern warfare
4 / 5 stars
Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman star in Gavin Hood’s tense thriller exploring the ethics of drone strikes
Mark Kermode, Observer film critic
@KermodeMovie
Sunday 17 April 2016 09.00 BST
The peculiarly disengaged nature of modern warfare has been explored in several recent dramas, from Rick Rosenthal’s 2013 thriller Drones to Andrew Niccol’s more celebrated 2014 drama Good Kill. Here, the South African director Gavin Hood assembles an A-list ensemble cast (including Alan Rickman in his last on-screen role) for a provocatively tense thriller that negotiates the moral minefields of its thorny subject matter in crowd-pleasing fashion.
The premise finds geographically disparate players, linked by phones and video screens, arguing the pros and cons of an ongoing drone operation that is unfolding in what feels like real time. While the set-up may be melodramatically contrived, weighing the cost of collateral damage – in this case, an innocent girl’s life against the prospect of multiple terrorist deaths – the result is still impressively ambivalent for a movie that aims to make an impact in the multiplex market.
Barkhad Abdi’s Jama Farah faces the enemy on the ground, piloting futuristic spyware from dangerously close quarters
We open in Nairobi, where Aisha Takow’s young Alia twirls a hula hoop in her backyard. Throughout the drama, which plays out on closely observed monitor screens, we shall return to such aerial views of Alia, caught on airborne surveillance cameras, the words “not for targeting” significantly nestled in the bottom left of the frame. From Nairobi we flit in quick succession to London, Nevada, Pearl Harbor and beyond, as the key players in a joint anti-terror operation assemble. Foremost among them is Helen Mirren’s Katherine Powell, the no-nonsense British colonel on the trail of al-Shabaab terrorists, most notably a radicalised UK citizen. Her mission is to “capture, not kill” the high-priority targets gathering near the yard where Alia plays. But when the spectre of an imminent suicide attack rears its head, her priorities become more lethal, as does the prospect of civilian casualties.
What follows is a nail-biting exercise in collective buck passing as the combatants, lawyers and politicians involved in the “kill chain” (the script’s original title) argue the personal, political and legal merits of launching a Hellfire missile attack in “a friendly country that is not at war”. In London, Rickman’s Lt General Frank Benson gradually loses patience with the propaganda-savvy bureaucrats who seem more concerned with saving face than saving lives. In Nevada, Aaron Paul’s drone pilot Steve Watts faces the moral dilemma of pulling the trigger from the safety of an airbase thousands of miles from the combat zone. Meanwhile, in Nairobi, Barkhad Abdi’s Jama Farah faces the enemy on the ground, piloting futuristic spyware (robotic hummingbirds and flying bug cameras) from dangerously close quarters.
Working from a dialogue-heavy script by Guy Hibbert (co-writer of Omagh), which is discursive rather than hectoring, Hood orchestrates his most satisfyingly complex film since 2005’s Oscar-winning Tsotsi, elegantly juggling our sympathies with the hawks and doves as he blends the newsworthy grit of his 2007 drama Rendition with the deadly video game accoutrements of 2013’s underrated Ender’s Game. There’s a telling scene in which Watts and his co-pilot stride out on to an airfield, apparently suited up for flight, only to enter what looks like a portable lavatory in which they will spend the rest of the movie.
At times there’s a touch of Dr Strangelove satire – Iain Glen’s UK foreign secretary taking a life-or-death call while emptying his bowels in a hotel loo in Singapore, or the US secretary of state in Beijing insisting brusquely that the Brits stop interrupting an important game of ping pong and start killing people. Rickman’s withering air of disdain is put to particularly fine use as those around him refuse to grasp the nettle and constantly “refer up”, but the fleeting humour is undercut by his steely contempt for those who debate the morality of warfare and propaganda while enjoying a tray of tea and biscuits. Jeremy Northam does a nice line in rabbit-in-the-headlights sweaty panic as the dithering minister asked point blank whether the mission may proceed, while Mirren is in her Prime Suspect element as the flinty colonel for whom death is just part of the job. As for Abdi, who was so believable as the lead hijacker in Paul Greengrass’s Captain Phillips, he tackles what is arguably the film’s trickiest role – the man on the ground with the sci-fi gadgetry – and makes it both convincing and gripping.
A low, pulsating synth motif (reminiscent of Tangerine Dream’s Sorcerer score) cranks up the tension when the drone is in flight, and cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos finds ample room among designer Johnny Breedt’s spacious interior sets to catch the actors doing more than just sitting, standing and pontificating. For all their televisual potential, these interiors become cinematic spaces, a varied lighting palette (from shafts of daylight to the constant glow of monitor screens) subtly emphasising the changing temperatures of the drama and lending a mainstream sheen to the endlessly argumentative action.
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