Movie Reaction: Eye in the Sky

Formula: 1 / Commando

This is why I like seeing a new movie every week. Most weeks I can find something I've been looking forward to seeing for a long time, even doubling (tripling, quadrupling, etc.) up on occasion. There's always a couple weeks though every year when nothing new or expanding excites me, so I just have to pick something. That's how I end up seeing The D-Train or The Judge, which I regret almost immediately. Occasionally, I'm surprised how much I end up really like something unexpected which is the case this week.

Eye in the Sky is both a very simple movie and an enormously complex one. It's an inversion on the "one man army" brand of military movies. It's not about the one person doing everything, but the army of decision makers involved in a single military mission, from the agent in the field, to the drone pilots, to the colonel running the operation, the general presenting the operation to the higher ups, the domestic and foreign diplomats worried about political ramifications, the facial recognition expert identifying the targets, the risk assessment officer, and, of course, the little girl who has no idea that she's in the middle of it all. In a way, Eye in the Sky is a magic trick the way it continues to expand and expand the number of people involved without losing track of any of them. It's like the plate spinner who you think has tried to do too much but ends the show without anything breaking.

At the base level, this is a very simple movie. Helen Mirren is a colonel in the British military in charge of capturing some terrorist targets in Nyrobi. When the mission escalates from 'capture' to 'kill', she needs to get permission for an air strike, despite a little girl being set up in the direct kill zone. That's it. It's a series of people in rooms deciding to pull a trigger. But it's so much more interesting than that.

The movie looks at this from every conceivable angle. There's legal, political, and moral questions that no one wants to ignore. The military commanders (like Mirren and Alan Rickman - a general working with the defense Minister) want to strike now while the fatalities are minimal. The politicians on one level are afraid of the PR woes this could cause, on another level, worry about the legality of such a strike (Kenya is a friendly country), and they simply don't have the stomach for collateral damage. Then there's Aaron Paul and Phoebe Fox who are the drone pilots actually doing the air strike, who have to live with potentially killing an innocent little girl who they can see in real time.

The ensemble is the strength of the movie. There's entirely too many people to name (and many that I don't know the name of). Mirren gives very little to the audience and it goes a long way. She's just a soldier doing her duty. Aaron Paul and Phoebe Fox do a great job wearing the weight of the task they've been given. I was worried that Alan Rickman (in, I believe, his final film role) was going to be wasted, then he got a dynamite speech at the end of the movie that required someone of his caliber. I've only seen Barkhad Abdi in Captain Phillips so it's nice to see him on the other side of things as the mission's man on the ground. And the little girl is adorable.

This was a movie where I felt like the odd man out in the theater. To cut the tension, there's a good amount of humor in this movie. Most if it is of the "are you fucking kidding me?" variety when another person stalls for time, which I found very funny. My fellow theater patrons did not appear to think they were allowed to laugh as much. Oh well, their loss.

I'm definitely flying high on the wings of lowered expectations, but Eye in the Sky was a real treat. You have to be a fan of this kind of movie. It a psychological thriller with very little actual action. It's very talky and there's not room for big performances. If any of that sounds like something you could like, you probably will.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend