Eye in the Sky

This was a difficult film to watch. But also important. It is an extremely well done presentation of the behind the scenes actions around drone strikes. I understand that everyone who sees this will see it through their own political and moral lens, somewhere between a moral tragedy and necessary heroic actions. The film itself dives into the political/moral morass explicitly through the presentation of a single military mission in two hours of real time viewing, which probably realistically reflects actual stress and drama. What starts out as a capture mission changes to a kill mission, with Helen Miren as the hawkish British Colonel leading the mission and Alan Rickman the general managing the politicians. The most telling statement of the film was the response by a political figure to the question "You would save this one collateral damage and suffer the risk of up to 80 deaths?" Her response ... "Yes". Unequivocally. Collateral damage is not acceptable. Imagine if we could create a world, by making daily difficult decisions, that values every individual life at every moment. Is it ever worth trading one life now for many, or potentially many, in the future? My answer is no. And so you see my bent. We think we can predict the future, so we think we can do the moral accounting and achieve the greater good. But what we, humanity, has never been able to achieve on a significant scale is to value the current life, and let that value system change the future. Even here, the filmmakers do an excellent job of letting us sit with the implications of the mission. We see many possible futures resulting from every decision made, and we are left to sit with the tragedy of these decisions, and second guess every one. And in the end, where do we come down? The power and ego that is wielded with the drone weapons are not acceptable in a civilization that I want to be part of. Everyone should see this film.
5 stars (out of 5)