Movie Review: "Eye in the Sky" (Gavin Hood, 2016)

WAR IS (DIGITAL) HELL by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: the late Alan Rickman in a scene from Mr. Hood’s new movie.  Photo ©Bleecker Street.

“Eye in the Sky,” the latest movie from Oscar-winning director Gavin Hood (“Tsotsi,” “Ender’s Game”) is a film about drone warfare.  In fact, the story is so steeped in the icky intricacies of technologically-enhanced combat that you could be forgiven for mistaking its superb English cast for an army of mechanized creatures with exceptional actorly finesse. 

The leader of the charge is Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren), a terrorist hunter whose single-minded ferocity makes Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator look like a Teletubby.  Her superior, Frank Benson (Alan Rickman), is equally icy; he seamlessly segues from shopping for a toy baby doll to suavely explaining to a tableful of politicians why they should authorize Powell to fire a missile at a terrorist stronghold in Kenya—even though a young girl is selling loaves of bread just outside the targeted building.

With so many sharp fragments of plot grinding against each other, “Eye in the Sky” could have easily impaled itself upon its vast scope.  Yet that doesn’t happen, mainly because the whole operation is masterminded by Mr. Hood.  Powered by sleek Hollywood suspense, thorny ethics, and a sorrowful, knowing attitude towards violence, “Eye in the Sky” reflects not only Mr. Hood’s maturation as a filmmaker, but his stint in law school and his time in the South African military.  It’s the work of a man who’s seen it all.

What the soldiers of “Eye in the Sky” see, they glimpse only through pixilated surveillance footage; it’s Steve Watts (Aaron Paul), a Vegas drone pilot serving under Colonel Powell, who first spots Alia (Aisha Tokow), the bread seller.  Over the phone, Powell insists that Watts take the shot; he doesn’t want to, though neither do Powell’s military and political superiors.  Like children playing a murderous round of Duck, Duck, Goose, they keep crying, “Not it!” and begging anyone else to choose between the life of Alia and the lives of the people who may (or may not) be killed in a potentially imminent terrorist attack. 

These seething boardroom debates mark a moment of scaling down for Mr. Hood, who spent roughly half a decade milking his operatic science-fiction epics, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” and “Ender’s Game,” for apocalyptic pathos.  By comparison, “Eye in the Sky” unfolds on a more diminutive canvas, though it gushes with the qualities that defined Mr. Hood’s tenure as a sci-fi auteur—his vicious contempt for militaristic violence and his nakedly heartfelt passion for honorability, truthfulness, and kindness.

“Eye in the Sky” hurls a wrench into that vibrant dichotomy by insinuating that there’s something inhumane about a soldier unwilling to kill one child to save the lives of countless other children.  Still, the film is pure Hood, not least because of its panting eagerness to both terrify and entertain.  After all, there’s no denying the shameful thrill of watching Watts wait for the right moment to pull the trigger, as the clock ticks closer and closer to block-wide Armageddon.

Better yet are the scenes on the dusty streets of Kenya, where a tough, wily agent named Jama Farah (Barkhad Abdi, as razor-thin as he was in “Captain Phillips”) spies on the terrorists per Powell’s orders.  While it’s stirring and chilling to watch Powell and Benson rage about the ethics of preemptive strikes, the sight of Farah flailing over ramshackle fences and racing through cramped alleys is more compelling because he’s not just raging.

He’s fighting for his life.