Eye in the Sky (2015)

Director: Gavin Hood

Writer: Guy Hibbert

Production: Raindog Films, Entertainment One

Starring: Helen Mirren, Alan Rickman

     The film unfolds the procedure of a UK-US joint counter-terrorist operation. Their initial plan was to capture two British and one American who flied to Kenya to join a terrorist group, but as it is revealed that they will take part in a suicide attack, the executives change the plan to kill them by using an UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) raid.

     Remote intervention in modern warfare was already depicted in Patriot Games (1992), but only with infrared images and close ups, it showed how much war can be indifferent and cold regardless of its impact. On the other hand, this film dissects the procedure of decision-making and foregrounds the gravity of the military campaign. As Laura Mulvey explicated, the film destroys the pleasure of spectacle by analyzing its procedure. This leads us to re-perceive the recent news about U.S. air raid on ISIS. We see such news every month and now it became somewhat commonplace. They say "U.S. air raid kills IS No. 2 (or something)"... and we casually think how powerful the U.S is and how easy to crash terrorists is. But this film reveals what kind of attempts and conflicts are at stake around a single attack.

     It also shows how much people are susceptible to image. [Spoiler] Colonel Powell lets her officer to manipulate the estimated casualty rate to get approval to attack from the headquarters. Her man emphasizes that it is merely an estimation and she says that she acknowledges it. However, as the casualty analysis is shown to the headquarters members in a diagram, they become convinced so easily. Through image, possibility becomes a fixed "truth". Its impact is so crucial because the heads kept tossing the responsibility to each other before the display of diagram. Ultimately, the film questions where the responsibility resides in the Fordistically fragmented warfare. The lives in the underdeveloped nation is determined not by someone in the site of battle but by those in quiet offices or someone in a cell with a joystick. In this sense, this film magnifies previously marginalized entities such as the indigenous residents and agents, who have been depicted in mainstream films as being primitive or gifted by Pax Americana. Showing the Mo'Allims firstly on the ending credits sequence can be understood by the same token. 

     Overall, it is not a tiring film. The director builds up thrill by constantly playing with the interaction between inside and outside of the frame. It is ironic that such shows the futility of vision despite the existence of various cutting-edge surveillance devices. And the entire film is wholly filled with such ironies like Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. I bet you will enjoy it.