Eye in the Sky

We watched Eye in the Sky recently and found it to be a timely subject with the terrors raging around our world today.

The review and synopsis on The Guardian will do this plot more justice than I could.  Here is a snippet from that article:

“We open in Nairobi, where Aisha Takow’s young Alia twirls a hula hoop in her backyard. Throughout the drama, which plays out on closely observed monitor screens, we shall return to such aerial views of Alia, caught on airborne surveillance cameras, the words “not for targeting” significantly nestled in the bottom left of the frame.

From Nairobi we flit in quick succession to London, Nevada, Pearl Harbor and beyond, as the key players in a joint anti-terror operation assemble. Foremost among them is Helen Mirren’s Katherine Powell, the no-nonsense British colonel on the trail of al-Shabaab terrorists, most notably a radicalised UK citizen. Her mission is to “capture, not kill” the high-priority targets gathering near the yard where Alia plays. But when the spectre of an imminent suicide attack rears its head, her priorities become more lethal, as does the prospect of civilian casualties.”

This was Alan Rickman’s last on screen role and he played it well. You could feel and hear his barely controlled frustration as politicians “passed the buck” on making a decision. There was no time to spare in deciding if a Hellfire missile should be deployed to eliminate 4 well known terrorists.

Between the referring back and forth to higher ranks and the calls between the UK, US and Nairobi it was nail biting at times. Other times this movie seemed to move at a very slow pace. A conundrum as you know a real and imminent threat was about to be unleashed and there was the ability to stop it immediately.

How do you choose between the certain sacrifice of an innocent girl who is in the line of fire and that of eliminating suicide bombers. You watched as the suicide vests were loaded up and fitted to the volunteers. You watched as they made their video before planning to go out to a crowded shopping center or public place to detonate and kill many innocent people. One girl’s life or a hundred lives?

At times it was a tense movie yet slow moving and, as I said, very timely in regard to the horrific news we see and read these days.  Great acting by Helen Mirren, Iain Glen and Alan Rickman just to single out two of my favorites.

Linking up with Joy’s British Isles Friday