'Eye in the Sky' Gives Us a Cerebral Look on Drone Operations as Well as Alan Rickman's Swan Song

I haven’t seen it yet, but the consensus for Alice Through the Looking Glass is that it’s messy and lacks substance.  Thus, that easily makes Eye in the Sky the superior posthumous film starring the beloved Alan Rickman (who just died earlier this year).

Eye in the Sky centers on a joint operation by the UK, the US, and Kenya.  The mission is to capture high-level members of the Al-Shabaab terrorist group who will have a meeting in Nairobi, Kenya.  Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren) overseas the operation at Northwood Headquarters, England, while reporting to her supervisor, Lieutenant General Frank Benson (Alan Rickman), who is in Cabinet Offices Briefing Room ‘A’ (COBRA), London, England with British government officials serving as witnesses.  A USAF Reaper drone being piloted by 2^nd Lieutenant Steve Watts (Aaron Paul) from Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, USA provides aerial surveillance (the so-called “eye in the sky”).  Facial recognition of targets is conducted by a base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  Kenyan Special Forces are on standby, ready to make the capture, while undercover Kenyan field agents, including insectothopter handler Jama Farah (Barkhad Abdi), are on site for ground intel.  Unfortunately, complications escalate the mission objective into one that requires a drone strike and the participants have to struggle with the political and ethical implications of its execution.

t took nearly twenty minutes into the movie before I finally become invested.  But once I got into it, I find it a very fascinating, cerebral watch as it gives us a look on how real-life drone operations are performed.  The direction is solid (a surprise for someone who directed the awful X-Men Origins: Wolverine), and the acting is as outstanding as you would expect from the caliber of such cast.  As a result, though a bulk of the movie is people talking and talking, it stays interesting and suspenseful.

Eye in the Sky is thought-provoking and moving.  The debates and discussions that might arise among its audience could turn out being as intellectual and intense as those from the film.  Not only is this movie informative with regards to the amazing technologies and intricate practices that are being exercised by modern warfare and espionage, but it also serves as a great study of the difficult moral dilemmas that come with them.  This gives the movie another reason why it’s a must watch aside from being Alan Rickman’s last big screen project.