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    Eye in the Sky

    Reviewed by
    adamwatchesmovies@

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    I thought I knew where I stood on drone warfare until I saw “Eye in the Sky”. This tight thriller is filled with so many timely questions, so many seemingly unsolvable dilemmas that you can’t help but be changed by it.

    Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren) is waiting. She’s discovered several high level Al-Shabaab extremists, all located in a building in the middle of a delicate area in Nairobi, Kenya. When surveillance equipment reveals that her target is getting ready to attack. The unmanned combat drone is ready to strike, but the UK government hesitates. A little girl (Aisha Takow) is standing right outside the building. Any attack targeting the extremists will take her out as well.

    For those of us who only hear about drone strikes from the comfort of our hopes, we picture flying robots zooming around, dropping bombs willy-nilly. Isn’t it just a way for us to avoid having our soldiers get injured while ensuring that the bad guys get targeted? “Eye in the Sky” shows you that it’s much more than that. It shows you the reality of it, a world that’s so complex it’s absurd. You want to target a threat? First you need a good reason to. Then, you have to ensure that decision won’t get you reprimanded. Time to bring in some lawyers and the PR people. To ensure the general populace will see it was the right thing to do. Is the country you’re thinking about dropping a bomb in friendly? Better bring in the foreign secretary to make sure he’s ok with it. Oops, one of the targets is a citizen from the U. S. Better call their Secretary of State. It just keeps going on and on. What happened to simply seeing a threat and taking it out?

    As “Eye in the Sky” plays out, the ticking clock gets louder and louder. It’s maddening. Without anyone on the ground making decisions, will we ever get results? The decision-making becomes a game of tennis. Frustrated soldiers sit on the side as the politicians pass the question of “Should we strike” from one person to another. The film is not funny, in the sense that there aren’t any jokes. What’s comical is that there are so many people running around trying to act that it seems like the obvious, right thing to do isn’t going to be done. Just drop the bomb already!

    - Woah! “Drop the bomb already? ” How can you say that? Sure these terrorists getting blown to bits won’t be any kind of loss, but what about that little girl. Since when do the means justify the end?

    - I’m not saying they do, but look. People are going to die anyway. Those suicide vests aren’t going detonate harmlessly. We need to act.

    - Those extremists haven’t left the building yet. They’re not even making a move for the door! There’s a chance we can save that little girl!

    - What about the countless other little girls that will be torn to shreds if we let these extremists escape? Are you going to be the person that sits down with each and every family and tell them we could have acted, but didn’t?

    - Are you going to go up to that little girl’s parents and tell them you could have avoided their daughter getting killed, but didn’t?!

    At a certain point, “Eye in the Sky” ceases to be about the extremists. It’s all about this Gordian Knot of an innocent standing in the way of a necessary action. You don’t know what to do. Everyone, whether for, or against the strike make excellent points. I always assumed that drone strikes were extremely impersonal. Select a target from kilometers away, at a distance where everyone is nothing but tiny dots and press a button. If anything, this film presents that course of action as too emotional! We are in a transitional period. No longer are soldiers on the ground making calls based on the threat they assess personally. We’re not at the point where we are delegating responsibilities to robotic brains that can make decisions purely on logical analysis and reason. It’s this maze of a situation where no one seems to know what to do and there’s no time to waste.

    I found that the film started off a little slow, but the further in it gets, the more intense it becomes. With every question about kill ratios, phone call and morality brought to the foreground the window of opportunity becomes smaller. The situation is made ever more delicate by the fact that you like the people involved in the decision. You understand who they are, what this ordeal means to them. Time is spent showing you that they are human beings so you want them to make the right call. Countless people could die needlessly if action is not taken. The question is “what should we do, and when? ”

    I like movies that reward my intelligence. This film is very talky, but that doesn’t mean it’s boring. It’s the opposite. This truly captures the real-life complexities of war in a way that some dumb action movie never could. Then there’s the conclusion. It comes in with a one-two punch that’s absolutely devastating. All of the testimonials made me think that I could finally say which end of drone warfare I stood on. Then, Alan Rickman as Lieutenant General Frank Benson delivers a few lines that made me reconsider everything. I won’t be able to look at a news report on a drone attack the same way again. “Eye in the Sky” is challenging. The way it handles it’s subject matter so well, I’d even call it important. (Theatrical version on the big screen, April 7, 2016)

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    adamwatchesmovies@  10.4.2016 age: 26-35 2,867 reviews

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