So, Who Is the Victim Here?

It is easy to concede that “Eye in the Sky” is a taut, well-made thriller about modern warfare, with an A-list, mostly British, cast. It would be a disservice to readers, however, to ignore the movie’s politics.

So at the risk of angering those whose views may not comport with mine, here goes: “Eye in the Sky” is the most shamefully manipulative, overtly propagandistic, and frankly dishonest film I have seen on the subject.

The basic outline of the plot is simple, the depiction of a drone warfare “kill chain” that reaches from 10 Downing Street and the U.S. Defense Department to a pair of drone operators (Aaron Paul and Phoebe Fox) in a Nevada bunker. Key people in the chain include war-tested soldiers—a British general (Alan Rickman in his final role, sadly) and his corporal (Helen Mirren), who heads up a drone surveillance operation called “Operation Egret.”

Their aim is to capture a group of Al-Shabaab terrorists meeting in a heavily-guarded house in Nairobi, Kenya. Nearby lives an innocent Kenyan girl (Aisha Takow) with her parents, who sells bread loaves at the outdoor market next door.

Things quickly go awry, and the British military and civilian leadership face a decision whether to unleash a Hellfire missile from the drone on the terrorists.

Forgive my ignorance of global geopolitics, but color me baffled about why the British government is in charge of an American drone doing surveillance in Kenya. Maybe it’s just convenient fiction.

The fiction at the heart of the movie’s mendacity is its weighty premise: that every white Westerner, along with a few kindly Kenyans, would be morally torn to pieces by the least chance of “collateral damage,” a single innocent girl, in fact. 

Considering the reality of hundreds, or thousands, of innocent civilians in faraway lands who have been literally torn to pieces by drone warfare, with barely the most tepid apologies from government spokespeople, “Eye in the Sky” becomes a sickening apologia for this continued practice. Whether you condone the use of drones to safeguard our national security or not, the making of a movie focused almost entirely on the psychological impact on the other “victims”—the ones who squeeze the trigger—is indefensible.

Sad to see the riveting, Somali-born “Captain Phillips” actor Barkhad Abdi wasted in a role as an on-the-ground government spy. Then again, that movie also taught us to feel sorry for the “good guys” who “had to” kill the dark-skinned “bad guys.”

“Eye in the Sky” is rated R for some violent images and language. It is playing widely.