1329. Eye In The Sky (2016)

Starring: Helen Mirren, Alan Rickman, Aaron Paul

Director: Gavin Hood

Running Time: 104 mins

Eye In The Sky is a British film about an urgent situation where British intelligence is on the verge of capturing three most wanted terrorists in a Kenyan town. However, the situation soon becomes a matter of high international attention when one little girl enters the danger zone.

This is one of the cleverest and most unique thrillers I’ve seen in a while. On the one hand, it delivers brilliantly in giving you 104 seriously nail-biting minutes, but on the other, it’s a film that really makes you think hard about the ethics, politics and consequences of war.

In comparison to the normal Hollywood thriller, this is a much more reserved take on the genre. So, rather than following secret agents or soldiers right in the middle of battle (although there are some seriously cool MI6 gadgets), we follow the people behind the scenes, and see everything that goes behind making an important decision in conflict.

That alone was really interesting to see, and with a fantastic cast portraying characters from all over the world that spend the entire movie effectively debating whether to push the button or not, you get an intriguing and amazingly engrossing insight into the world behind wars.

The way that this film plays out is fantastic too. It’s not necessarily a high-octane thriller, but it’s so effective at creating tension and suspense that you’re on the edge of your seat within the first twenty minutes, and then you’re there for the rest of the movie, making this one of the most consistently exciting and engrossing movies I’ve ever seen.

However, the reason that I think Eye In The Sky stands out so much as a brilliant film is because of how intelligent it is. Its screenplay is brilliantly written, and it manages to deliver the high intensity of this situation mostly through dialogue, but it also puts you, as the viewer, right in the hot seat on whether pulling the trigger is the right decision.

You’ll inevitably have your own view as the situation begins to unfold, and I felt fully convinced that I was right about what should happen. However, this film challenges you brilliantly by introducing points of view from all across the political and military spectrum. It doesn’t present the idea that one decision is necessarily the best, but instead gives you all the possible solutions to the desperate situation with the clock ticking, and leaves it up to you to decide what should happen, a puzzle that I absolutely loved trying to solve as the film developed.

Overall, I was really impressed by Eye In The Sky. Not only is it a well-made thriller that’s hugely exciting to watch, but it’s also a brilliantly intelligent film that gets you thinking hard for its entire duration, pulling you deeper and deeper into the situation at hand, which was absolutely thrilling to experience, and that’s why I’m giving it an 8.5.