Eye in the Sky ★★★½

ABOUT the 30 minute mark, I started to get angry with the taut British drama Eye in the Sky.

The film asks you to consider what level of collateral death or injury may be acceptable as part of a military first strike aimed at potentially averting many more casualties?

It’s a topical and confronting question that warrants detailed, robust and, above all, balanced treatment.

This 2015 release generally does an excellent job but, at that 30 minute mark, it almost loses the audience. By choosing to focus inordinately on the fate of just one individual, it appears to be pushing us to support a particular view.

Would the political/military machine really agonise so deeply over potential harm that may be caused to one child in deciding whether to launch a drone attack that would kill two terrorist cell leaders along with the suicide bombers being armed for imminent despatch?

The tipping point against the film does pass and, to the writers’ credit, the delicate balance is maintained. It’s a tough moral debate and you realise that the film, like the viewer, is struggling to find a way to achieve some understanding and resolution.

The acting is excellent and under-stated across the board, particularly from the veterans Helen Mirren and the late Alan Rickman.

The action – and this film does make political debate look bruising and full of tension – is enhanced by the movement between multiple characters and locations:  Mirren manipulating the situation in Cambridge, Rickman battling MPs in Whitehall, a drone crews’ operations base in Nevada, MPs via phone from Germany and China and the surveillance forces on the ground in Namibia.

It’s nail-biting stuff.