REVIEW: EYE IN THE SKY (2016)
UK Rating: 15
Release Date: 15th April 2016
Running Time: 102 minutes
Director: Gavin Hood
Genre: Thriller
Starring: Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul, Alan Rickman, Barkhad Abdi, Jeremy Northam, Iain Glen
This was an excellent film. It created edge-of-your-seat tension and portrayed realistically the attitudes and outcome of the moral dilemma on which the film is based. Which is, in short, the following: three of the five most wanted terrorists are inside a house in Kenya, along with two suicide bombers who are just arming up with enough explosives to kill an estimated 80 innocent people. A Hellfire missile is (for a reason I won’t go into here) the military’s only chance to prevent the attack. But a young teenage girl is too close to the house.
If you’re interested in seeing the film, I would certainly urge you to do so—and it might be best if you did so without reading the rest of the review, since it will be very difficult to discuss the film without giving away hints about the ending, which will very much undermine the impact of the film.
It was unsurprising, but still nice, to see the British High Command not buying into the US military’s language of only ‘one collateral damage issue’ and facing up to the fact that it was actually ‘one young girl’. Not that all of the UK characters are stalling from moral values, some are stalling from cowardice, not wanting to be the one responsible for the decision, and others from genuine moral confusion. There’s a great deal of buck-passing, leading to the Americans even placing pressure on them to make the strike—despite the fact their own pilot is stalling as well.
Of course, I doubt there’s any moral theologian who wouldn’t consider this to be an open and shut case. It is, morally. If you kill an innocent girl, you are responsible for that. The sin is yours. If terrorists kill 80 people, they are responsible for that. The sin is theirs. Morally, you cannot knowingly kill or seriously injure one innocent girl in order to prevent someone else from committing a future sin which they might, for all you know, choose at the last moment not to commit. (There’s a whole other ‘innocent until proven guilty’ issue that doesn’t even get a look in, as well.) Annoyingly, no one ever states the moral case, straight out. The film almost gets there at one point, only to swerve onto a propaganda analysis instead: if the terrorists kill 80 people, we win the propaganda war—if we kill one girl, they do. It’s to the character’s credit that they don’t stop with this cold-blooded argument, and remained focused on saving lives, regardless of the public relations risks. But good intentions do not justify sin: the end never justifies the means.
This film makes me feel like applying the premise of my new novella SOMEDAY to it: how would everyone feel if a Kenyan drone was flying over a suburb of Birmingham, with the people controlling it debating whether to launch a missile that would, after all, kill only one Brummie girl and perhaps save 80 people. Would the US Secretary of State still consider it a total no-brainer? And if not, why?
One hopes desperately for a happy ending to this film, yet in a sense, a happy ending is a cop out. To find out whether or not that’s what the filmmakers choose, you’ll have to watch the film!
Incidentally, it’s Alan Rickman’s last film, and it’s dedicated to him. R.I.P. Alan Rickman.
Overall: Excellent film. One of those where the cinema is completely silent throughout. It builds to a nail-biting climax with an unexpected twist. Highly recommended.
Sex/Violence/Profanity/etc: No sex or nudity. Infrequent bloody moments and distressing scenes. Infrequent strong language.
Have you seen this film? What did you think?
