Eye In The Sky

Movie Review by: Jasmine Allen

The fictional movie, Eye in the Sky, directed by Gavin Hood portrays a battle of multiple character’s inner moralities by the use of a drone strike mission. One of the main leads, Colonel Katherine Powell, played by Helen Mirren, has had her eye on a particular terrorist for years and is finally given the opportunity to take the subject out, along with two additional high-level targets and suicide bombers. Powell remains adamant throughout the whole movie that they must proceed even though there will be collateral damage. While the intended mission was to be a capture not kill, Powell changes the objective to kill. She believes that they should kill now or risk letting the terrorist go out and enact more harm. Although Powell is “calling the shots” she still needs approval from the British Army Legal Counsel, to her frustrations continue to escalate the situation up the chain of command. As tensions escalate Powell orders a reassessment of the civilian death, which places the estimate to be at 45%; however, not citing the higher number that is also associated with it. Finally given the go-ahead, the missile is fired twice, killing an innocent child in the process.

Through my insight, Powell, the lead, tends to place her ambition above everything else. Throughout the entire movie, she seeks to continue with the drone strike, despite knowing that the collateral damage rate for an innocent civilian is too high. She is focused on getting the Al-Shabaab group, which is a very dangerous terrorist organization, and in her view, the opportunity is too good to pass up because of one innocent civilian death.  As tensions rise, Powell lies and states the damage control percentage was only going to be 45%, after the information is relayed, it is cleared and the strike is ordered. Powell then forces her agent to place the reduced damage control percentage in the report.

 In all war-like situations, civilian death is expected, my concern is that the leaders in the British Army Legal Counsel are too focused on their own narrative. Not necessarily caring about the child that is going to die in the drone strike, but how are they going to explain, and perform damage control “ If they kill 80 people, we win the propaganda war; If we kill one child in a drone strike…they do” They are correct, however, it goes to show that they care nothing about the girl, only their reputation. If other ordinary people around the world were to see this it would be deemed controversial. Of course, in the history books, it is always made to look as if they are in the right, and that their motives were pure, when in some cases that is inaccurate. War is ugly and every side has its point of the view, however, mischaracterizing the events to your citizens and to the generations that follow is a recurring problem for various countries. Everyone wants their side to look as if they are in the right, in reality, only the people in the room at the time will know the actual truth of the situation, regardless of what the books may say.

In the beginning, we were also able to catch a glance into the life of another main character, Lieutenant General Frank Benson. In the scene, he was out purchasing a  doll for his young daughter, before going to the London Situation room. After the mission is over, he is able to go home and give the doll to his daughter. The irony of it all is that he is able to go home to his daughter and bring her a doll, after killing someone else’s. It also points out the unfairness of life in general, two young girls, one who was simply trying to make a living for her family, while one is being pampered by her father. The tragic reality is there is a girl who will never see her father again in this world, while one is receiving gifts from hers. This is not to point blame at the little girl for simply wanting a doll, but I believe by placing that specific part in the movie allowed us to see how so many are dealt an unfair card deck. One girl is happy to receive a doll, while the other would just be happy to breathe again.