JANUARY 10, 2016
— PALM SPRINGS, CA
I could be glib and say that “Eye in the Sky” is the best Helen Mirren film about drone warfare that you’re ever likely to see, but I would be doing director Gavin Hood’s new blackly-comic thriller a grave disservice.
This provocative work, which had its U.S. premiere this week at the Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF), manages to succeed on three very different levels — as a very black comedy, as a ticking-clock thriller and as a thoughtful examination of the morality of killing dozens of people from the safety of your chair.
The drone operation here is being led on the ground by Col. Katherine Powell (Mirren, back in her steely “Prime Suspect” mode) who has been tracking radicalized Englishwoman Susan Helen Danford (Lex King), long suspected of working with the terrorist group Al Shabaab. The trail leads to a modest home in Nairobi, Kenya where Danford is meeting with Al Shabaab operatives, two of whom, along with Danford, are on the “most wanted terrorist” list. Col. Powell’s mission is to capture them all alive.
The situation changes, however, when their undercover operative on the streets, Jama Farah (the wonderful Barkhad Abdi of “Captain Phillips”), sends a tiny drone resembling a flying beetle inside the house, where it captures the image of an Al Shabaab member fitting two young men (one British, one American) with suicide vests. “Well, this changes things,” observes Lt. Gen. Frank Benson (the always droll Alan Rickman), who has been monitoring the proceedings from Westminster along with several cabinet ministers.
Col. Powell then orders the mission be changed to one of “kill,” since, if the suicide bombers manage to leave the house alive, tens (or maybe hundreds) of people will be slaughtered. Benson agrees with her, but they need the legal OK from the cabinet members, who immediately revert to “cover your ass” mode and proceed to kick it upstairs to the U.K. Foreign Secretary (Iain Glen) who’s fighting a bout with food poisoning and the U.S. Secretary of State (who strangely resembles Jeb Bush) who’s playing ping-pong in China. Meanwhile, the bombs are being placed one-by-one into the terrorists’ suicide vests, and the clock is beginning to tick.
Once clearance is finally given to proceed, Col. Powell contacts drone pilot Steve Watts (Aaron Paul of “Breaking Bad”, who’s terrific here) to ready the armed drone above the house to fire. Things are set when the drone camera catches sight of a 9 year-old girl (whom we have come to know and care for) setting up her family’s bread stand which is right in front of the house that’s about to be blown to kingdom come. This, just as the last bombs are being placed in the terrorists’ suicide vests.
What to do?
The shift from dark comedy to nail-biting thriller is a tough one to pull off, but somehow Hood manages it, thanks to an excellent and nuanced script by Guy Hibbert, which ably threads the needle between these two very different genres. The Foreign Secretary conducting business on the toilet may go a bit far, but you haven’t lived until you see Rickman, in full military uniform, in a toy store torn whether to buy a doll for a loved one that talks when it’s “time for beddy-bye.”
The ticking-clock suspense, though, works like a charm. Can this little girl sell her 10 loaves of bread before the suicide bombers leave to blow up some Westfield shopping mall? That suspense is excruciating at times.
The most intriguing part of the film, however, is the questions it raises about the morality of the situation. What’s more important — is the life of one little girl worth more than those potentially hundreds of lives that will be lost if you let the suicide bombers get away? And what about the propaganda value? If the bad guys blow up hundreds of people, the world will think it’s business as usual. If the good guys let one little girl get blown up, they will be soundly condemned worldwide.
While it’s admirable that Hood and Hibbert include the point-of-view of the victims here, I have to say that the use of the little girl at times feels like emotional manipulation. If they had pulled back just a little in that area, the charge generated by this storyline would feel much more earned.
Still, Hood and Hibbert are bravely raising moral questions regarding the use of drones that we should be grappling with now and will be definitely grappling with in the future.
“Eye in the Sky” is scheduled to open in U.S. theaters on March 11. The 2016 film year looks like it’s off to a great start.
GRADE: B+
