“This is the wonderful thing about espionage; nothing exists anymore.” — William Stephenson

When is an African beetle not a beetle? When is a desert bird sitting on a fence not really a bird? The answers are blowing in the hot African wind of Gavin Hood’s “Eye in the Sky.” Keep your eyes open, your fingers out of your mouth.

“Eye” in the title is the ubiquitous drone that prowls the night sky while we sleep, hovers over the Arabian deserts, the Golden Gate and Brooklyn bridges.

“Eye” is what the late Spencer Tracy called “quality.” We know it’s quality, because it runs on the star power of Britain’s Helen Mirren and the late Alan Rickman.

“Eye” is the story of one day in the life of a high-tech hit job, a well planned take-out of a British woman who has been working with Al Qaida and is, at the moment, in a meeting in a house in a small neighborhood of Nairobi, Kenya.

We never see her or the others, but Col. Katherine Powell (Mirren) does from her huge, state-of-the-art underground chambers in England.

The action is also being watched by a panel of British Brits: a lieutenant General (Rickman) in London; fellow watchers in Africa and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; the British foreign minister sitting on his toilet in Hong Kong; and two drone pilots in a special unit in the Nevada desert (Aaron Paul, “Breaking Bad” and Phoebe Fox).

Mirren’s colonel has been following her turncoat spy for six years, and now she has her in her sights — or the sights of the silent drone overhead in Nairobi.

They are all waiting for the order to fire, sending two Hellfire missiles crashing into the house. It’s not going to be that easy. There’s something else in another room in that house, and there’s the matter of a little girl selling bread at a stand outside the gate.

Now we have multiple problems: a political and moral dilemma and an international legal situation that could blow up more than the house.

This, complements of the drone, is what we see: five British pols and a military officer in one London room, two pilot gunners with their sweaty fingers on the trigger, a cold-blooded determined Mirren, a Nairobi agent (a really good Barkhad Abdi from “Captain Phillips”).

Decisions will be discussed and made and then abandoned. Orders will be given, refused and given again.

Director Gavin Hood (“Rendition,” “Ender’s Game”) has a master script by Guy Hibbert and knows exactly how to run it. He also gives us more knowledge of the deep world of drones than we need to know.

You out there in the dark may well find the last 10 or 15 minutes unbearable and be tempted to close your eyes.

Two last-minute dashes by the peasant Kenyan agent and a small boy will make your hands sweat.

Hood flashes back and forth between the hands, eyes, mouths of the players and the other mystery in the house that could turn the Hellfire missiles impact into an apocalyptic nightmare.

Mirren has a portrait gallery of diverse characters. In this, all sympathy is drained from her Col. Powell. She stands in the gray light of her chamber, a sexy-camo clothed, specially trained military hit woman, James Bond’s “M” without a heart, Bourne with memory fully intact, and she’s loving the job.

This is the great Alan Rickman’s last on-screen feature, and all of that great gift is there. In a sad twist of cinematic fate, Rickman is both a soldier and an actor at the end of his career. Both are hard to watch.

“Eye in the Sky,” in full British fashion, takes its time in building the plot frame by frame with Paul Hepker and Mark Kilian’s score beating in our ears and Haris Zambarloukos’ camera buzzing like a beetle and flapping silent wings like a bird. Don’t take your eyes off those creatures.

J.P. Devine is a former stage and screen actor and the author of “Will Work for Food.”

Copy the Story Link

« Previous

J.P. Devine Movie Review: 'Hello, My Name is Doris'

Next »

J.P. Devine Movie Review: 'Demolition'