Review of Eye in the Sky (2015) by Clarisesamuels — 29 Mar 2016

A film about drone warfare makes one think there will be many battle scenes, a lot of soldiers, and much blood and gore. But this film is different—this movie depicts how warfare is conducted in the board room by high-ranking military officials, cabinet members, prime ministers and presidents. It also depicts the high-tech kind of war that is waged with drones and surveillance equipment that can be as small as an insect as it flies through the air and silently enters buildings through windows and other apertures.

Helen Mirren plays Colonel Powell, who after six years of tracking terrorist extremists, has finally cornered three of her most-wanted in one building in Kenya. The original plan was to capture, not kill, until the surveillance “beetle” enters and transmits a horrific scene to Powell and her associates, as well as Lt. General Benson (Alan Rickman) in London who is watching the events on screen with other important British politicians—two terrorists are making their final video before they suit up with their explosive vests as they prepare for a suicide mission. The plan to capture, not kill, has to be changed almost immediately, for the military has less than an hour to release a “hellfire” on the building before the terrorists board their vehicles and head for their destination, which is most likely going to be a crowded mall. The hellfire will kill everyone in the building, as well as people in a limited perimeter around the building, a risk which is referred to as “collateral damage.” In order to change the plan, quick conferences are needed with British higher-ups, and because one terrorist is an American citizen, the Secretary of State has to be interrupted in China, where he is participating in a ping-pong tournament.

The approvals are quickly gathered, the sights are set on their target, the countdown begins, and then at the last minute, an innocent little Islamic girl sets up her table to sell bread smack in the middle of the dangerous periphery surrounding the building. Thus begins an agonizing process of calculating how to reduce the collateral in order to save the life of one child before an estimated eighty or so people are murdered in a crowded mall. The process is nerve-wracking, time is running out, and the British politicians are very squeamish about the whole idea of killing a child. Classic philosophical dilemmas are in this fashion presented—the Rousseauian argument that the goal of the state is the realization of the common good as identified by the will of a political community and expressed through its government; and the famous philosophical “Trolley Problem,” a thought experiment where the choice is to divert a train that is about to kill five people onto a track where it will only kill one, or do nothing. Although the choice to save many instead of only one may seem plausible, no one wants to be responsible for making that decision.

The weapons of war are depicted with fascinating realism in this film. Mirren is at her best as a high-ranking military officer who wants her country's enemies taken out at all costs; she is close to being ruthless. The late Alan Rickman as a senior lieutenant general is beautifully understated in his calm determination to do the right thing and guide the process from a conference room. He is formidable when he delivers a key line, “Don't ever tell a soldier that he doesn't know the cost of war.” And playing a Kenyan native who is recruited to be an undercover spy for the British is the unique Barkhad Abdi, who before starring in the film Captain Phillips had no previous acting experience—he is a joy to watch on screen.