EYE IN THE SKY
Director: Gavin Hood
Cast: Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul, Alan Rickman, Barkhad Abdi, Jeremy Northam, Iain Glen
Rating: (M)
Three and a half stars (out of five)
In a house in the suburbs of Nairobi, a small group of wanted Al-Shabaab militants are being watched by the titular eye, an unmanned surveillance drone being controlled from a Nevada Air Force base by remote pilot, as part of a capture mission headed by no-nonsense Col Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren).
Overseeing the raid is Lt Gen Frank Benson (Alan Rickman), who is monitoring the situation from a war room in London along with several UK Government officials, while Kenyan ground troops prepare to detain the suspects.
Everything is running smoothly until a youg girl walks into this scenario and sets up a bread stall on the street outside the house.
Complicating things even further is the discovery by field agents, using a literal electronic bug, that the group inside are preparing for a suicide bombing, presumably to be carried out in a civilian location that day.
Col Powell makes the call to change the mission status from capture to kill ...
From then on it's classic ticking-clock edge-of-your-seat stuff as the various players weigh up the potential collateral damage of a drone strike against the even more dire consequences of a suicide attack, ultimately playing out as an engrossing look into the moral implications of advanced technology in the battlefield.
- Jeremy Quinn
