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Review / ‘Eye In the Sky’ (M) ****

alan-rickman, eye in the sky movieTHE screenplay that Guy Hibbert crafted for Gavin Hood’s riveting military/political/techno-thriller of our time on our planet has virtues putting it streets ahead of the expensive trash, fertilised with outer-space monsters and flying vehicles that obey none of the proven laws of physics, with which “comic book” publishers Marvel or DC pollute cinema screens.

“Eye In the Sky” conforms with the dramatic unities of place and time and the 3C principles for managing military or law enforcement operations – command, co-ordination and communication.

Its plot unfolds with high-tech military communications hardware (I don’t know which items are in service or which, if any, exist only in Hibbert’s imagination), co-ordinating strategic and tactical analysis by British policy advisers whose decisions reach up to head-of-government level for approval and down to commanders of action-ready US and Kenyan military units.

The credible, exciting plot has fun highlighting bureaucratic duck-shoving of hard choices to higher levels for approval. The emotional conflicts can tug the heartstrings of every parent, amaze as a colonel orders a sergeant to make a collateral damage evaluation way above the latter’s pay grade.

One simple option. Will Kenyan ground units standing by in Nairobi to assault a building to capture people wanted to prosecute for terrorist crimes get the go from Britain’s COBRA committee? Or will a pilot at a desk at a Nevada air force base flying a UAV somewhere within missile range get the order to launch a missile and, if so, at which corner of that building?

Coming to the decision, and the cinematic skills deployed to bring it to the screen, are one reason for the four stars. The other is that the role of the COBRA chairman was Alan Rickman’s last, which gives the film an additional emotional dimension.

At Palace Electric, Dendy, from March 24

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Dougal Macdonald

Dougal Macdonald

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2 Responses to Review / ‘Eye In the Sky’ (M) ****

Ben Garfath says: 5 May 2016 at 6:42 pm

Sounds like a good story, and I’m sure that with Alan Rickman aboard, there’ll be at least some good acting.

What though, is your beef with DC/Marvel movies? Can a movie not be made purely for entertainment purposes?

Ben.

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Jeremy says: 20 August 2016 at 11:05 am

I enjoyed this. I also have enjoyed ‘comic book’ movies. Sorry for not being a discerning enough for your standards. Also, how does an actor’s passing improve their performance? You didn’t seem to care for Anton Yelchin’s death in your Star Trek Beyond review, and here you are giving points for Alan Rickman’s. It’s almost as if you would have enjoyed the movie less if Rickman hadn’t died…

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