John Wayne would not recognize the modern war film. Nor would the legendary Iowa-born actor who's performed in every cinematic battle from Colonial America to the Vietnam conflict recognize modern warfare and the politics of fighting. That is the morass director Gavin Hood("X-Men Origins: Wolverine") tries to navigate in the drama, " Eye in the Sky."
The day begins routinely enough for the seasoned and unfaltering British Colonel Katherine Powell ( Helen Mirren, who you definitely want answering the phone at 3 a.m.). She's charged with capturing a Kenyan terrorist "connected to extremists in Minnesota" (uhm, thanks for the shout-out... I think) and coordinating air surveillance with a U.S. drone pilot (Breaking Bad's Aaron Paul).
But when the observed terrorists begin arming themselves for an imminent suicide bombing, Powell makes the call to nip the threat in the bud only to find herself stuck between a cadre of dithering politicians and the genuinely morally-conflicted Lieutenant who has to actually pull the trigger.
Hood wisely avoids mansplaining the feckless policies that allowed the terrorism threat grow in the first place and instead focuses on the moral dilemma of playing the ultimate eye in the sky — God — deciding who should live or die vis-à-vis collateral damage. Here the paralyzing question is whether or not the life of an innocent child is worth saving eighty victims in a suicide bombing.
Powell knows this is a moment Churchill would call her finest hour, but is constrained by a situation room full of politicians concerned with the optics and political fallout of a targeted missile strike. (In this, his last screen role, Alan Rickmanis perfectly cast as her superior who is perennially exhausted by the indecisiveness in the room.)
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"Eye in the Sky" is provocative, well-written and riveting precisely for the moral ambiguity of sacrificing scores to save a single life in order to win the "propaganda" war, as one politician admits, against terrorists who organize in populated areas under the safety of human shields.
Craftily executed so moviegoers share both Powell's frustration and the skittishness of politicians reluctant to take responsibility in a world where the rules of engagement are as vague as the objectives of modern battle.
"Eye in the Sky" is one of the first films to broach this quandary, but it won't be the last.
4 Honks
