Eye in the Sky - Movie Review
May 29, 2016
At the recent White House Correspondents’ Dinner, President Obama broke from his string of one-liners to say “I just think Helen Mirren is awesome”. He probably had seen her fine performance in the Eye in the Sky. Eye in the Sky, (Screenplay by Guy Hibbert; directed by Gavin Hood) is a movie that sustains tension as it examines how an ethical decision is made and what the outcomes of that decision will be. It focuses on the emotional tensions associated with fighting terrorism as it contrasts the superbly unambiguous and accurate technology of drone warfare with the conflicted, muddled moral dilemmas we face with such technology.
Mirren plays Katherine Powell, a British army colonel who is in charge of a mission to capture a group of El-Shabaab extremists, including a recently radicalized American and a radicalized English woman who Powell has obsessively studied over six years. Mirren’s portrayal of Powell shows a confident, capable leader with complete role clarity. By initially using drone technology to surveil the extremists, Powell and her associates discover that the terrorists, located in Nairobi, Kenya, are also counting down in their own mission to assemble and deploy on suicide bombs. Powell demands approval to change her mission from capture to kill because the suicide attack on a village marketplace is clearly imminent, with an estimated 80 deaths likely.
Her superior, Lt. General Frank Benson (Alan Rickman), enters the scene of a London strategy room first holding a doll he has apparently bought for his daughter. As he hands the doll to an underling to exchange because he’s gotten the type wrong, he shows his two roles as both a caring father and as a military leader. Yes, he cares for his daughter, but it is time to separate from that concern and play his role in the military bureaucracy.
As the drone hovers over the terrorists’ den, the camera focuses on another child, Alia (Aisha Takow), who is enchanting as she swirls and twirls with a hula hoop that her Somali refugee father, a bicycle repairman, has fashioned for her. In an earlier scene, her father was socially threatened for the audacity of allowing this girl to have a toy. In another scene father and daughter quickly hide a lesson book so that none in the village will discover the father’s audacity to educate a girl. The drone is technologically so powerful and accurate that it is able to put a face to this little girl – not simply a number or a euphemism.
The plot is relatively simple. Powell’s web of authority, accountability and culpability is intentionally complex as she relies on Benson to secure agreement that the kill order is warranted from both the Brits and the Americans. The American drone pilot, Steve Watts (Aaron Paul) located in Las Vegas, is visibly conflicted while looking at Alia’s position and pulls a procedural trump card, asking for a second risk recalculation, adding another dimension to the ethical tug-of-war. While each of the members of the operational team show anguish and humanity about their moral challenge, they require consent from others who are removed from the scene. Lawyers and politicians play a game of persuasion and cover-your-ass called “referring up” as they show disinterest or political cowardice, before eventually they consent. The referring up showes both a conscientiousness, but also a silly process where those with the most information are forced to defer to those who were less involved and less likely to understand the consequences of the action.
Cinematically, Alia is perfect as the audience sees how her parents love and nurture her, but also how those in the military must confront their actions as the mission threatens to kill her. The drone, so powerful and accurate is also the technology that puts a face to this little girl – not a number or a euphemism, but a little girl. Each in his or her own way, players all show empathy and humanity for her.
Helen Mirren’s character is the most complex as she icily calculates the risk of the one child. Some reviewers have portrayed her as unfeeling, especially as she pressures a subordinant to recompute his initial assessment of collateral damage estimate (CDE) and to come up with a lower CDE. The lower CDE shields the accountability designed to reduce individual culpability. At first it seems like Powell is pressuring her subordinate to understate his CDE. Later it becomes clear that how the computation of the CDE is made is as full of vagaries as are the other ethical challenges faced in war. Redoing the CDE becomes an allegory for the slipperiness of the boundary between right and wrong.
However, Powell’s dilemma is the essence of the ethical and moral challenge faced in all wars. Her role demands that she show humanity to those who will never be viewed by the Eye in the Sky. They are those whose destiny is changed as Powell sacrifices the one child to protect the unseen 80 likely to die in the marketplace.
In Eye in the Sky, the arguments are set up with fable-like simplicity. What if the intent of the enemy is very clear, if every person involved in a kill mission focused on every collateral damage victim, if all involved debated the merits and consequences of the mission, if pilots cried for the deaths of innocent victims and fought superiors who pressured them? We would seldom have such an opportunity for clarity – yet, even with these extremes, the answers are not clear.
The premise that we must fight terrorists is counterpoised against our uncertainty about how to fight them as the movie presents the fog of ethics rather than the usual fog of war. With drones, we can see the consequences of military action, but still have limited foresight about how to use the power we wield. The technology is very precise and powerful, but the human capability to deal with the technology is not as well developed. At one point, Lt General Benson sets up the public relations and moral dilemma: if we don’t bomb the terrorists and they proceed to kill 80 people, we win the public opinion war (but will be complicit in those deaths); if we kill one of the terrorists first and at the same time kill even one innocent civilian as “collateral damage”, the terrorists win the public opinion war. In this movie, as perhaps in real life, the terrorists win the public relations argument.
The movie is abundantly sympathetic to the military, as we see each of character suffer from the pain of the decision they must make in silence as the public is largely unaware of their dilemma. Again, Benson’s comments remind us, ““Never tell a soldier that he does not know the cost of war”.
Mirren plays Katherine Powell, a British army colonel who is in charge of a mission to capture a group of El-Shabaab extremists, including a recently radicalized American and a radicalized English woman who Powell has obsessively studied over six years. Mirren’s portrayal of Powell shows a confident, capable leader with complete role clarity. By initially using drone technology to surveil the extremists, Powell and her associates discover that the terrorists, located in Nairobi, Kenya, are also counting down in their own mission to assemble and deploy on suicide bombs. Powell demands approval to change her mission from capture to kill because the suicide attack on a village marketplace is clearly imminent, with an estimated 80 deaths likely.
Her superior, Lt. General Frank Benson (Alan Rickman), enters the scene of a London strategy room first holding a doll he has apparently bought for his daughter. As he hands the doll to an underling to exchange because he’s gotten the type wrong, he shows his two roles as both a caring father and as a military leader. Yes, he cares for his daughter, but it is time to separate from that concern and play his role in the military bureaucracy.
As the drone hovers over the terrorists’ den, the camera focuses on another child, Alia (Aisha Takow), who is enchanting as she swirls and twirls with a hula hoop that her Somali refugee father, a bicycle repairman, has fashioned for her. In an earlier scene, her father was socially threatened for the audacity of allowing this girl to have a toy. In another scene father and daughter quickly hide a lesson book so that none in the village will discover the father’s audacity to educate a girl. The drone is technologically so powerful and accurate that it is able to put a face to this little girl – not simply a number or a euphemism.
The plot is relatively simple. Powell’s web of authority, accountability and culpability is intentionally complex as she relies on Benson to secure agreement that the kill order is warranted from both the Brits and the Americans. The American drone pilot, Steve Watts (Aaron Paul) located in Las Vegas, is visibly conflicted while looking at Alia’s position and pulls a procedural trump card, asking for a second risk recalculation, adding another dimension to the ethical tug-of-war. While each of the members of the operational team show anguish and humanity about their moral challenge, they require consent from others who are removed from the scene. Lawyers and politicians play a game of persuasion and cover-your-ass called “referring up” as they show disinterest or political cowardice, before eventually they consent. The referring up showes both a conscientiousness, but also a silly process where those with the most information are forced to defer to those who were less involved and less likely to understand the consequences of the action.
Cinematically, Alia is perfect as the audience sees how her parents love and nurture her, but also how those in the military must confront their actions as the mission threatens to kill her. The drone, so powerful and accurate is also the technology that puts a face to this little girl – not a number or a euphemism, but a little girl. Each in his or her own way, players all show empathy and humanity for her.
Helen Mirren’s character is the most complex as she icily calculates the risk of the one child. Some reviewers have portrayed her as unfeeling, especially as she pressures a subordinant to recompute his initial assessment of collateral damage estimate (CDE) and to come up with a lower CDE. The lower CDE shields the accountability designed to reduce individual culpability. At first it seems like Powell is pressuring her subordinate to understate his CDE. Later it becomes clear that how the computation of the CDE is made is as full of vagaries as are the other ethical challenges faced in war. Redoing the CDE becomes an allegory for the slipperiness of the boundary between right and wrong.
However, Powell’s dilemma is the essence of the ethical and moral challenge faced in all wars. Her role demands that she show humanity to those who will never be viewed by the Eye in the Sky. They are those whose destiny is changed as Powell sacrifices the one child to protect the unseen 80 likely to die in the marketplace.
In Eye in the Sky, the arguments are set up with fable-like simplicity. What if the intent of the enemy is very clear, if every person involved in a kill mission focused on every collateral damage victim, if all involved debated the merits and consequences of the mission, if pilots cried for the deaths of innocent victims and fought superiors who pressured them? We would seldom have such an opportunity for clarity – yet, even with these extremes, the answers are not clear.
The premise that we must fight terrorists is counterpoised against our uncertainty about how to fight them as the movie presents the fog of ethics rather than the usual fog of war. With drones, we can see the consequences of military action, but still have limited foresight about how to use the power we wield. The technology is very precise and powerful, but the human capability to deal with the technology is not as well developed. At one point, Lt General Benson sets up the public relations and moral dilemma: if we don’t bomb the terrorists and they proceed to kill 80 people, we win the public opinion war (but will be complicit in those deaths); if we kill one of the terrorists first and at the same time kill even one innocent civilian as “collateral damage”, the terrorists win the public opinion war. In this movie, as perhaps in real life, the terrorists win the public relations argument.
The movie is abundantly sympathetic to the military, as we see each of character suffer from the pain of the decision they must make in silence as the public is largely unaware of their dilemma. Again, Benson’s comments remind us, ““Never tell a soldier that he does not know the cost of war”.