Eye In The Sky

Gavin Hood's suspenseful "Eye in the Sky" takes a literal bird's-eye view of both sides of the drone debate: the impossible equation of mediating collateral damage verses thwarting terrorism.

A multinational team, headed remotely from a British bunker by Colonel Katherine Powell (marvelous Helen Mirren in a tired but tightly-wound turn), is surveying terrorists in Kenya (targets #2, 4 and 5 on the US President's east Africa list). Her Operation Egret intends to capture Al Shabaaab operatives (Somalia's al Qaeda affiliate with a severe interpretation of sharia law) along with radicalized UK and US ex-pats.

Once it's revealed - by low-flying bird- and beetle-shaped mini-drones - that their meeting in Eastleigh, a militia-controlled, Muslim neighborhood, is a double suicide-bombing staging area, the mission becomes a targeted kill raid, yet they "cannot send a strike without a positive ID." The animalized drones are finally able to get it when they are able to peek under a hijab.

Powell coordinates with her superior Lt. General Frank Benson (also wonderful, also conflicted but detached Alan Rickman, in one of his final roles), who needs to run this change in ops by the a stream of politicians in his Whitehall Ministry of Defence situation room as well as via secure mobile phones at their various global locations.

Angela Northman (Monica Dolan) wants the British woman terrorist suspect to stand trial, but, since "there is no law to cover a situation like this," the rest either don't care (despite the decision being "obvious to anyone to avoid not making a decision") or are hell-bent to launch a Hellfire missile from the traditional, higher-up Predator drone.

When some people debate the PR impact of stopping a terrorist attack that could kill scores of civilian men, women and children, versus the potential death of a child and the social media outrage that would engender, Benson muses that "revolutions are fueled by postings on YouTube."

Powell relays, drives and eventually fudges the complicated change in orders to American drone commanders and pilots Steve Watts (Aaron Paul) and Carrie Gershon (Phoebe Fox) at Creech AFB in Nevada and commanders in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, as well as to her boots-on-the-ground, more in harms way Kenyan counterparts.

Powell is anxious to prevent a Westgate Shopping Mall-type (real) terrorist attack, where at least 67 people were slaughtered in an upscale Nairobi mall.

"The force to be used is in proportion to an attack," she says, and attempts to move the virtual team to "prosecute the target."

But next door to the terrorist house lives an ordinary family, a bicycle repairman who secretly teaches his daughter math and reading, and his chapati-baking wife. Their nine-year-old daughter leaves their compound to sell the round bread around the corner, in front of the wall secluding the jihadists.

Once Watts identifies the girl and her precarious position, assigning an adorable chubby-cheeked face to collateral damage, he puts the brakes on the operation until she or the bomb target can be moved to a more acceptable survival percentage zone.

The end of the film, mostly shot in South Africa, reminds viewers to "never tell a soldier that he does not know the cost of war." However, the opening credits cite Aeschylus's "in war, truth is the first casualty." There is no high road in the war on terror; just the dusty tracks made by conflicted, oppositional humans, made ant-like by a soulless, flying spy plane, a video game where the kills are real. And the name of that possible collateral damage? Alia, in the capable human hands of newcomer Aisha Takow.