Film Review: Eye in the Sky

Director Gavin Hood’s intelligence, wit and keen eye for detail is on full display in this gripping comic thriller, which shows the games of political tennis taking place behind modern warfare.

Helen Mirren heads up an impressive ensemble cast as a steely colonel who has spent six years tracking key members of al-Shabaab, the terrorist group responsible for several bombings, including the Kenyan shopping mall attack. When two of the terrorists – one a radicalised young English woman – are tracked to a house in a Nairobi neighbourhood, debates rage as to whether a military drone assault should be launched to “prosecute the target” – and whether the likely collateral damage is worth the potential number of lives saved.

Eye In The Sky is unequivocally a thriller, but Hood creates a unique energy by juxtaposing breathstopping tension with the deliberately frustrating inaction of boardroom debates.
As an angelic local girl (Aisha Takow) comes to represent both the potential civilian cost of the drone strike and the other children at risk from the suicide bombers, Hood shows the deathly high stakes of the impending decision. From Captain Phillips’ (Barkhad Abdi) undercover sleuthing right outside the target house, to the moral dilemma being shouldered by Aaron Paul’s drone pilot, the film is brimming with nail-biting menace.

These scenes are contrasted with the sedate calm of government offices, where a British lieutenant general (Alan Rickman) struggles through circular arguments with euphemism-loving, image-conscious British politicos. As Hood humanises his characters, their cowardice, hypocrisy and indecision are underscored by tragic humour.

Viscerally tense and slyly comic, Eye In The Sky handles moral and political conflicts with a gut-twisting realism, and asks the audience to engage with questions that are deeply uncomfortable.