You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Eye in the Sky.
It’s touted as a suspenseful thriller about Drone warfare.
The star power alone is enough to put fannies in the seats.
The acting chops are high in this film, staring with Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman – now deceased and Aaron Paul of Breaking Bad fame.
It’s about the morality of modern warfare. It’s about antiseptic killing from 22,000 feet.
It’s about the cost of life versus the cost of lives.
It’s about the dilemma of killing one little girl versus the potential of 80 people dying somewhere in the future.
The movie gets good reviews and a high rotten tomato grade.
If I had a tomato to throw at the screen, I would have.
I didn’t like it.
It starts cold and dark and never warms up.
There is not a single smile in the entire film.
There is not a laugh in 120 minutes.
I understand it was going for reality, but on a Saturday date night, I need a little more entertainment.
The theater was comatose like a crypt. We weren’t as much spellbound as we were unconscious, drooling on ourselves wishing it would stop.
The problem for me is the characters don’t move. They are sedentary throughout the film.
They sit in board rooms. They sit in underground installations staring at monitors. They sit in Las Vegas silos piloting invisible drones flying over Africa. There is barely a close up, since optics from outer space.
There were times in the theater when it was so quiet I could hear the sour stomach gurgling in the man behind me.
The story is complex, yet simple.
Should the US and British governments Kill high ranking terrorists in a house even though a 9 year old girl is sitting in the blast radius.
The plot moves at the pace of paint drying.
Long passages of legal-ease fill the screen by characters who are involved only on a public relations and political level.
“We’ll have to pass the issue up,” the decision makers say repeatedly.
So the law and morality of killing with a hell fire missile is discussed by bureaucrats in 2 nations as soldiers implore the politicians to pull the trigger.
It’s like watching lawyers argue a land contract.
The only exciting character is played by a covert operative on the ground who is flying a mechanical looking cock roach that infiltrates the home of the terrorists.
He is chased through the city square by the local militia.
It is a welcome plot point as it energizes the theater with sound and movement.
It’s the only time it feels like a movie.
The actors do a good job portraying the moral dilemma of sacrificing the life of a child for the greater good.
But it is so restrained, it is hard to root for anyone.
The movie ends much the way it began.
Quietly reserved and disinterested.
Maybe this is how it happens in real life.
I’m just not sure this sedentary slice of new world warfare was a good story to tell cinematically.
I wouldn’t recommend this film to anyone I like.
Life’s Crazy™