Review of Eye in the Sky (2007) by Daniel R — 20 Apr 2016

Eye In The Sky came with really good reviews, and addresses a topic that's important to me: drone strikes. But above all, it's set in Nairobi, my home. So I absolutely had to see it!

Unfortunately, this movie is so bad, I can only ask people not to watch it. It's not just not worth it, it's actually damaging to the very argument it's trying to make!

First of all, the movie's depiction of Nairobi is absolutely horrible. Eastleigh, the Somali neighborhood, it presented as a small village controlled by Islamist terrorists. Machine-gun mounted pick-up trucks cruise the streets and everybody is armed with AK-47s. The Kenyan police is completely absent and even the military can't enter the neighborhood. In reality, Eastleigh is a bustling and dense urban neighborhood with thriving businesses and a very mixed population. Kenyans and even Westerners wander around freely. The Somali residents complain not about the threat of terrorists, but the harassment they face from the police.

Eye in the Sky suggests that Kenya is a fallen state, hopelessly underdeveloped with a government inept to prevent open terrorist activities. What the makers of this movie do not seem to realize is that such a portrayal of a country dependent on tourism to a naive international audience causes way more collateral damage than the drone strike does in the movie!

But the movie not only reinforces the worst stereotypes about Africa, it also reinforces the worst myths about drone strikes. While the movie criticizes politicians for their cowardice and senior military figures for their callous deceptions, the movie does not question the drone strike itself. It assumes, wrongly, that 1) the intelligence accompanying a drone strike is detailed and accurate and 2) the technology of the strike itself is precise and clean. The question is not whether a drone strike can cause unpredictable collateral damage, but whether the decision-makers will accept predictable collateral damage. As a consequence, Eye In The Sky supports the myth of 'clean' warfare through drone strikes.

Beyond the drone strike itself, the movie is also absolutely pathetic in it's depiction of the Kenyan military and the Al-Shabaab terrorists. The Kenyan military are one the one hand equipped with the most futuristic technology and do an outstanding job at surveillance. On the other hand, they are rather subservient, obediently following orders from a British colonel on the other side of the world, and surprisingly empathetic, even shedding some tears over the death of a little Somali girl. To anybody familiar with the history of atrocities committed by the Kenyan military on the Somali community, this is just laughable.

But even more surprising is the empathy displayed by the Al-Shabaab terrorists towards the end of the movie, when at the sight of the dead little girl they drop their weapons, forget about the spy they were chasing, and join forces in getting the girl to the hospital. If that was truly the behavior of Al-Shabaab fighters, then by all means, we should let them run Somalia!

The imaginary world of this movie, where the enemy is stupid and primitive, the allies are sophisticated and near-omniscient, and warfare is neat and clean, is not disturbed by the brief intrusions of reality in the form of American politicians who alone seem to understand the messiness of war and have made up their minds about their priorities.