EYE IN THE SKY (R)
Released By Bleecker Street
Review By Dan Bringhurst
EYE IN THE SKY–which just dropped on Blu-ray and DVD–stars a mesmerizing Helen Mirren, the late Alan Rickman, Aaron Paul, and Barkhad Abdi, who made a startling acting debut in CAPTAIN PHILLIPS just three years ago. This film is helmed expertly by Gavin Hood, who also brought us TSOTSI and ENDER’S GAME.
EYE IN THE SKY examines the complexities surrounding the red tape and chain of command that accompanies destroying terrorists via the predator drone in Nairobi, Kenya. But what would have been an interesting political thriller in and of its self, much like THIRTEEN DAYS or THE KINGDOM, is suddenly further transformed into a gut wrenching hour and forty-two minutes as we watch via satellite feed the home in which the suspects are preparing an imminent attack using explosives, vests, and assault rifles.
Agent on the ground, Jama Farah (Abdi)–who appears to blend seamlessly within the confines of a dangerous neighborhood– maneuvers close to the building at his very real peril, finally arriving within view of the home and withdrawing a small drone designed to look like a flying beetle. He activates the drone using his cell phone and it floats effortlessly through the air, over the wall, through the cracked back door, up into the rafters, and finally rests overhead, sharing it’s live video feed with Washington as the Muslim extremists prepare themselves for their inevitable deaths.
It’s mere moments until the predator’s trigger is to be pulled, and Aaron Paul is at his best, channeling, for a moment at least, Jesse in “Breaking Bad,” specifically, the episode when he thought he had killed a child; And it’s only right that this comparison is made, for we have good reason, because it’s here we see from the satellite feed a little girl spreading her blanket out over a table beside the wall parallel to the home. She’s within the blast radius and suddenly everything has changed.
The girl lays out her bread, sits with a hopeful smile, and nods as various people walk by, sometimes bickering over the price, but more often happily purchasing the bread, which would undoubtedly go a long way to helping her family. Steve Watts (Paul) is all but ecstatic to halt the predator’s strike, if not for the child’s life, then for the fact that he has yet to ever pull the trigger in such a situation.
But is one innocent child worth the lives of those the terrorists would kill if the drone was called off? Col. Katherine Powell (Mirren) is cold in this regard, and despite what you or I may think the right answer is, she appears to make up her mind before the question is even posed:
The girl must die.
Too much work has been done; too many times, these terrorists have slipped into the ether and disappeared, set free to kill more and more innocent people. Powell seems hell bent on destroying the home at any cost, and she’ll manipulate anyone to see this thing done.
EYE IN THE SKY is taut, smart, and gut wrenching in ways that took me back to TRAINING DAY, with Ethan Hawke in that dark, hopeless bathtub. The music sets a tone that’s both exhilarating and focused, beating its way through the film in quiet strides that, at times, really reminded me that this was more than a political drama. A child’s life is at stake, the line between right and wrong is virtually nonexistent, and this film represents a very real situation unfolding even as we speak, somewhere too far away to affect us directly and too distant to be real. But it is real and EYE IN THE SKY effectively reminds of that.
