X
- 2016
- R
- Bleecker Street Media
- 1 h 42 m
- 2016
- R
- Bleecker Street Media
- 1 h 42 m
Summary Through remote surveillance and on-the-ground intel, Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren), a UK-based military officer in command of a top secret drone operation to capture terrorists in Kenya discovers the targets are planning a suicide bombing and the mission escalates from “capture” to “kill.” But as American pilot Steve Watts (Aa...
Directed By: Gavin Hood
Written By: Guy Hibbert
- 2016
- R
- Bleecker Street Media
- 1 h 42 m
- 2016
- R
- Bleecker Street Media
- 1 h 42 m
Eye in the Sky
73
7.1
Where to Watch
Summary Through remote surveillance and on-the-ground intel, Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren), a UK-based military officer in command of a top secret drone operation to capture terrorists in Kenya discovers the targets are planning a suicide bombing and the mission escalates from “capture” to “kill.” But as American pilot Steve Watts (Aa...
Directed By: Gavin Hood
Written By: Guy Hibbert
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 39 Critic Reviews
73
82% Positive
32 Reviews
32 Reviews
18% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 39 Critic Reviews
73
82% Positive
32 Reviews
32 Reviews
18% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
In a world full of recyclable superheroes and mindless “empowerment” comedies, we’re finally getting a movie about reality. We’re surrounded by surveillance and the threat of violence, and this film asks us to judge the proper balance between liberty and security – and the amount of collateral damage acceptable to maintain the latter.
This is the kind of intelligent, thought-provoking mainstream film that’s in danger of becoming extinct. Eye in the Sky is miles above the average multiplex flick.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 194 User Ratings
7.1
74% Positive
143 Ratings
143 Ratings
18% Mixed
34 Ratings
34 Ratings
9% Negative
17 Ratings
17 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 194 User Ratings
7.1
74% Positive
143 Ratings
143 Ratings
18% Mixed
34 Ratings
34 Ratings
9% Negative
17 Ratings
17 Ratings
A fine movie that can actually keep attention **** person. The less you know about it in advance the better. The movie is clever, suspenseful, and the acting performances are outstanding, especially by Alan Rickman and Helen Mirren. It is not a perfect movie (no movie is) but it is perfectly suspenseful from first to last second. Different people will walk away from it with different views of what happened or should have happened. That makes this film perfect for a post-movie debate. Also, it is refreshing to see a movie without a manufactured villain. Instead we see a number of characters trying to make decisions with which they are charged with to their best of abilities under very stressful and time-constraining circumstances. We also get to see the aftermath and consequences of their decisions.
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Interesting to see people in the theater getting frustrated with the decision making even when the movie does all it can to personalize the pain of war through the cute little girl. I did laugh many times though. One can easily see how easy it is to make those kinds of decisions in real life when you don't have that face looking back at you.
Of course the movie only tackled a simple dilemma. The real dilemma of course is why we even have this dilemma. Maybe a movie should be made called: "Money, Oil, and the Suicide Bomber."
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Eye in the Sky aims to thrill and covertly manages to inform simultaneously.
The acting is world-class in Eye in the Sky, a timely and tense but sometimes heavy-handed drama set in the modern world of drone warfare.
The suspense is killer as military minds in the US and the UK come together only to lock horns on a drone operation in Nairobi.
There’s wit, integrity and insight here, but it cries out for a lighter touch.
The problem with movies depicting the banality of anything, of course, is that they tend to be pretty banal themselves; in setting out to be the exception to that rule, Eye in the Sky only proves it.
A film about drone warfare makes one think there will be many battle scenes, a lot of soldiers, and much blood and gore. But this film is different—this movie depicts how warfare is conducted in the board room by high-ranking military officials, cabinet members, prime ministers and presidents. It also depicts the high-tech kind of war that is waged with drones and surveillance equipment that can be as small as an insect as it flies through the air and silently enters buildings through windows and other apertures.
Helen Mirren plays Colonel Powell, who after six years of tracking terrorist extremists, has finally cornered three of her most-wanted in one building in Kenya. The original plan was to capture, not kill, until the surveillance “beetle” enters and transmits a horrific scene to Powell and her associates, as well as Lt. General Benson (Alan Rickman) in London who is watching the events on screen with other important British politicians—two terrorists are making their final video before they suit up with their explosive vests as they prepare for a suicide mission. The plan to capture, not kill, has to be changed almost immediately, for the military has less than an hour to release a “hellfire” on the building before the terrorists board their vehicles and head for their destination, which is most likely going to be a crowded mall. The hellfire will kill everyone in the building, as well as people in a limited perimeter around the building, a risk which is referred to as “collateral damage.” In order to change the plan, quick conferences are needed with British higher-ups, and because one terrorist is an American citizen, the Secretary of State has to be interrupted in China, where he is participating in a ping-pong tournament.
The approvals are quickly gathered, the sights are set on their target, the countdown begins, and then at the last minute, an innocent little Islamic girl sets up her table to sell bread smack in the middle of the dangerous periphery surrounding the building. Thus begins an agonizing process of calculating how to reduce the collateral in order to save the life of one child before an estimated eighty or so people are murdered in a crowded mall. The process is nerve-wracking, time is running out, and the British politicians are very squeamish about the whole idea of killing a child. Classic philosophical dilemmas are in this fashion presented—the Rousseauian argument that the goal of the state is the realization of the common good as identified by the will of a political community and expressed through its government; and the famous philosophical “Trolley Problem,” a thought experiment where the choice is to divert a train that is about to kill five people onto a track where it will only kill one, or do nothing. Although the choice to save many instead of only one may seem plausible, no one wants to be responsible for making that decision.
The weapons of war are depicted with fascinating realism in this film. Mirren is at her best as a high-ranking military officer who wants her country's enemies taken out at all costs; she is close to being ruthless. The late Alan Rickman as a senior lieutenant general is beautifully understated in his calm determination to do the right thing and guide the process from a conference room. He is formidable when he delivers a key line, “Don't ever tell a soldier that he doesn't know the cost of war.” And playing a Kenyan native who is recruited to be an undercover spy for the British is the unique Barkhad Abdi, who before starring in the film Captain Phillips had no previous acting experience—he is a joy to watch on screen.
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I see Pinkman in Paul who is armed with moving performance and Snape in Rickman as always gloating but this time without the half-smirk on his face.
Eye In The Sky
The director Gavin Hood has been lucky. And I don't want to be that guy that says that the day is over as soon as you land a project. It goes without saying that he works incredibly hard and hence is successful in his well established rhythm. I say only lucky or even well suited for a job as such, because I have experienced his big budget blockbuster films that may have not worked but definitely has dared to go big and made a splash around the town. And this is actually a great combination. Usually, these big banner films like say.. Marvel, choose their storytellers wisely and mostly the ones who have excelled in making Indie films and romanticize, dramatize and glorify tiny aspects, relationships, characters and essential elements.
Which makes sense on hiring such makers since the fireworks of visual effects will always be dazzling for the audience, the only think they require now is someone making them care for the characters. But lately I have seen a couple of examples where they have flipped the coin of such themed ideas. And that is that now these Indie films gets sponsored if some commercial filmmaker chooses to tell the story of such importance both politically and socially.
So now the tactics that these makers are inherited with and that is to keep the audience at the edge of their seats, comes in handy and makes the formal paperworks interesting and juicy. Eye In The Sky remains gripping through this effective formula. You see direction and editing go hand in hand just to make you give the chills of a chase scene by staying in one room among the same characters and the same objectives. That last part, the objective, that endorses the film in every language.
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It raises interesting ethical and moral problems that are associated with anti-terrorism efforts in foreign countries and drone attacks. However, there is little in the movie aside from the consideration of the central dilemma, so it was over-long.
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Simplistic propaganda for gullible audience. The fact that US drone attacks kill civilians on regular basis (including a whole marriage parade in Pakistan and Reuters camera man) means the safeguards and care for civilian lives are nowhere near the level displayed in the movie. The amount of checking and double checking in the movie actually borders on parody, moving the whole spectacle among other forgettable US pro-military apologist flics (a.k.a. propaganda BS). Points for decent acting and professor Snape. He deserve better movie for his last appearance on camera.
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[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]
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Production Company
Raindog Films,
Entertainment One,
EITS,
Endeavor Content
Release Date Mar 11, 2016
Duration 1 h 42 m
Rating R
Tagline The commander is in England. The drone pilot is in America. The terrorist is in Kenya. And the authority to strike is up in the air.
Awards
National Board of Review, USA
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
Evening Standard British Film Awards
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
Writers' Guild of Great Britain
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
