Eye in the Sky

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Gavin Hood/Starring: Helen Mirren, Alan Rickman, Aaron Paul, Barkhad Abdi, Jeremy Northam and Phoebe Fox

The moments in war, when one becomes aware collateral damage will take a life or lives of non-combatants, must be truly horrific. High-ranking officers, generals, administrative personnel and soldiers are able to live with their decisions; knowing a hostile or potentially hostile target has been eliminated. For those with a conscience, liquidating an enemy at the cost of killing a child who has no role in a conflict or war; a child living in the Third World who is merely trying to cope with the hardships of survival--might give someone pause. But what if a military operation designed to eliminate suicide bombers--terrorists determined to kill a large number of people indiscriminately--also took the life of a young, innocent bystander; perhaps a little girl? The convoluted question has no easy answers. Such a confounding question is the focus of director Gavin Hood's brilliant, morally complex and gripping war drama Eye in the Sky; a film that is sure to stimulate reflection and discussion.

Hood's film shows us how a little girl selling bread could conceivably keep an operation in moral and bureaucratic gridlock; tying up military and civilian command personnel in a welter of indecision that is sure to make a movie-goer writhe in frustration.

Helen Mirren plays British Colonel Katherine Powell, who oversees a joint British/American operation involving Al Shabab militants, who are to gather in a Shabab-controlled neighborhood inside western-allied Kenya. Complicating the operation is the location, as Kenya is western-friendly territory. But another wrinkle are three of the operatives in Shabab's terrorist plot, which involve one British subject and two American citizens. While two of the western participants are young men who have joined Al Shabab's cause, an American woman married to a key member of the Islamic militant outfit is another target of the allied operation.

As an American drone provides aerial surveillance, the Kenyan special forces deploy an operative named Jama Farah (a terrific Barkhad Abdi; who played the Somali terrorist in Captain Phillips) on the ground , who controls tiny surveillance drones of his own.

After Farah infiltrates the Al-Shabab neighborhood, he deploys ingeniously-designed drones resembling a hummingbird and a small insect to spy on those inside the compound housing the terrorists. Drawing on drone-footage, Powell determines all the persons in question are accounted for, thereby designating the house a legitimate military target. With a phone link to the American drone pilots; Steve Watts (Aaron Paul) and Carrie Gershon (Phoebe Fox); who watch the live aerial footage from an Air-Force base in Nevada, Powell awaits approval from her superiors to issue an order to launch the drone's dreaded Hellfire missiles.

What might seem like a cut and dried operation becomes complicated when a young girl from the neighborhood surrounding the compound sets up a table outside the walls to sell bread. Reluctant to jeopardize the young girl's life, Powell's higher-ups, which include Lt. General Frank Benson (the late, great Alan Rickman; in one of his final roles), a government minister (Jeremy Northam), several government officials, including a legal adviser, all weigh the moral and legal impact of the little girl's almost certain death. While Powell and Benson support an immediate attack, the government officials are loathe to sacrifice the little girl's life. The cabinet's debate becomes testy, as Benson reminds the group that the terrorists are sure to kill an estimated 75-80 people in a crowded, public space if not eliminated, while the government officials refuse to give their consent, essentially adopting the role of the girl's advocates. Meanwhile, the possibility that the terrorists will leave the compound before a strike can be approved becomes the film's ticking-clock.

What is particularly fascinating about the story are the multiple points-of-view; Powell in her command center with her own personnel, who understand the operation's moral stickiness; Benson and government officials who preside god-like over the proceedings; Farah, who sits just outside the compound, and Watts and Gershon, who are entrusted to launch the missiles but who are no less reluctant to kill a little girl to achieve a military objective.

Guy Hibbert's fiendishly sharp screenplay piles on the tension but also the frustration as the order to launch is volleyed back and forth through British and American channels, causing everyone to defer or delay a decision or refuse to accept accountability for making one. The situation becomes comical when Benson's group contacts a British official in Malaysia, who suffers from a gastrointestinal problem, for approval. Citing the troublesome problem of two of the targets being American, the group also seeks permission from an American government official to proceed with the attack, only to be given his peevish consent with his why-are-you-wasting-my-time-with-this attitude. The maddening vacillations between military and governmental personnel become acutely frustrating, as entanglements mount.

But we the audience are also asked to make a decision; to consider what the character's must, thereby making us passively complicit. For Benson and Powell, two soldiers, only one course of action is possible; sacrificing one to save many. Though Benson and Powell's objective is hardly wrong, it is also not right. In an intelligently-written story such as this, no one individual is right or wrong. But in the final half-hour of the film, after Powell orders a second strike upon the compound to ensure the American woman has been eliminated, we're asked as an audience to weigh the expedience of her decision. The sight of mangled and severed limbs of the those killed in the compound leave an indelible impression. Even Farah, a mere Somali operative for the Kenyan military, sees the gravity and the fallout of his participation in the operation. No one is left unscathed or untouched by the attack; particularly Watts and Gershon, whose emotional response to carrying out their orders is one of the film's most poignant moments. One of the final scenes in the film show Benson being handed a bag with a toy which he asked an aide to exchange for another he mistakenly bought earlier in the film. The toy attains a tragic significance; we know the recipient is most likely a privileged child that doesn't have to sell bread on a street to survive and will most likely never be the target of a drone. A thoughtful and powerful statement in a film spilling over with them.

What is critical in a film with multiple points-of-view is keeping the story coherent and the characters relevant. Hood's unerring direction ensures every thread connecting numerous characters to the main story sidesteps extraneousness. Every character is crucial to the narrative.

Though the acting is superlative throughout, it is difficult not to see Helen Mirren's performance as the film's centerpiece. Though Powell obsessively pursues her objective and is willing to go as far as fudging collateral damage calculations to ensure the Hellfires are launched, it would be wrong to say she is completely indifferent to the little girl's welfare. Though Powell is ultimately the agent of death and destruction, Mirren makes her a sympathetic figure.

It is fascinating to consider the drama surrounding the little girl and how much suspense is teased from whether she fails or succeeds at selling her bread. It is disconcerting to think that so many people--a chain of personnel with god-like powers--are trusted with the decision as to who lives or dies.

Whether Hood intended to or not, we see military and governmental personnel, as well as soldiers, give their actions due reflection, which contrast sharply with those of the terrorists, who would most likely not consider the well-being of a little girl when they detonate their bombs. One group exercises discrimination, calculates collateral damage, while the other concerns itself not with who, but how many.

I think Eye in the Sky is one of the first truly terrific films of the year. It is thoughtful, thought-provoking, and a helluva of a nail-biter.

The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Tom Harper/Starring: Phoebe Fox, Jeremy Irvine, Oaklee Pendergast and Helen McCrory

The 2012 film The Woman in Black told the story of a young lawyer, played by Daniel Radcliffe, whose stay at an English country manor became a frightening ordeal, for he encounters the ghost of woman who seeks revenge for her drowned child. The film was ably cast, had atmosphere and its share of mild frights. Now comes the sequel: The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death; which is not so much a sequel as a continuation of the the ghost's reign of terror. Like the original (pardon my amnesia, I can recall little of it. What does that tell you?), director Tom Harper's film offers more gloom and a few creepy moments, but like its predecessor, I know I'll be hard-pressed to remember much about it come June.

Set forty years after the first film, 1941 has brought the Wehrmacht to England's front door. Daily bombings and the threat of an invasion have prompted the government to evacuate children to safer places at home and abroad. Acting as guardians for one such group of refugees is a woman named Jean Hogg (Helen McCrory, playing an excellent harpy) and her governess Eve Parkins (Phoebe Fox), who have secured the infamous Eel Marsh House in the country as a temporary shelter and home.

After boarding a train bound for the country, Eve meets a young, handsome pilot named Harry Burnstow (Jeremy Irvine) and before she and her group reach their destination, the foundations of a romance have already been laid.

The group then boards a bus to carry them on to Eel Marsh but a flat tire delays them. As Eve wanders about some abandoned buildings nearby, she encounters an old man raving incomprehensibly. Frightened, she hurries back to the bus, where the children and an impatient Mrs. Hogg wait on board.

When the group arrives at dismal-looking manor, Mrs. Hogg complains bitterly about the condition of the premises, which are more than just a little run down. Eve tries to make the best of the surroundings as she leads the children into their sleeping quarters, where peeling walls and ceiling holes greet them.

Eve learns that one of the children named Edward (Oaklee Pendergast) has been rendered mute by the devastating loss of his parents in an air-raid. While he silently draws, some of the boys single him out for teasing and pranks. Eve becomes sensitive to Edward's self-imposed isolation and tries in vain to get him to mix with the other children.

She begins to hear strange noises around the house and as the days pass, she is convinced someone else is lurking on the grounds, though Mrs. Hogg is loathe to frighten the children with the news.

Eve begins to see a woman in a black dress skulking about.

Following a nasty prank the boys play on Edward, where they lock him in a room with creepy-looking dolls and a rocking chair, she breaks into the room to find him staring into a corner of the room. When she tries to coax a confession from him about what he saw, Edward uses a notepad to convey messages from the mysterious woman.

The group's stay at Eel House becomes more harrowing when one of Edward's tormentors takes a somnambulant turn into the marsh. In the morning, as Mrs. Hogg and Eve search desperately for the missing boy, they find him lying in the marsh, dead; his muddy body coiled in barbwire.

The mystery of Eel House begins to reveal itself to the women as they learn the black clad woman was once an asylum patient who gave birth to a child who was subsequently taken from her. Before she could reunite with the child, it drowned in the marsh. The creepy cross Eve sees poking out from the water stands as a mute memorial to the child. Eve and Mrs. Hogg also learn the black-clad woman carries on a vendetta, which includes any and all children as her victims.

The two women enlist the help of Eve's boyfriend Harry to remove the children from the house, where they are driven to the airfield where he is supposedly stationed. They discover the airfield is actually a dummy airbase the government uses to deceive German bombers.

Eve discovers Harry is a decommissioned pilot who bears the guilt of having been responsible for the deaths of his crew when his plane went down over the ocean. Having lost the confidence of the British air force, his assignment to the dummy airfield is an indignity that compounds his guilt.
It comes to light that the malevolent woman in black is feeding off the group's grief, guilt and anxiety. Her menu includes Mrs. Hogg fretting over her husband and sons serving in the war, Edward's grieving for his parents and Eve's own horrific past, which involves a child conceived and delivered out of wedlock, and of course Harry's survivor's guilt.

The ending involves a sacrifice and a rescue in the marsh, where Eve must confront the evil gripping Eel Marsh House.

Director Tom Harper, with the assistance of cinematographer George Steel, are able to recapture Eel Marsh's sinister gloom and the war-ravaged ruins of London, while the set design dazzles the eye with a sufficiently decrepit manor; convincing rubble and crumble are seen everywhere.

But Harper is better at making everything look rather than feel dark and threatening. He is quite adept at making us jump, but brief shocks aren't the same as sustained dread. We know things will pop out and startle us but I never truly felt fear. And for the Woman in Black herself, she seems more a pill than a hellish specter with a homicidal agenda.

I certainly can't fault the performances. British horror filmmakers, unlike their American counterparts, are more apt to cast actors rather than bubble-headed hams in key roles.

The Woman in Black 2 doesn't really build on its predecessor, it only mimics it. And though it seems pointless for me to mention, the film leaves the possibility of a third installment wide open. What horror film doesn't these days?

So I guess we can expect more of the Woman in Black. Will she ever work out her issues? Who knows? The more relevant question may be; will I be on hand to witness such a rehabilitation, if and when it should occur? My few and dear readers, you should know by now I never learn my lesson. But you should also know you can count on me to save you a few bucks. Let me jump on those grenades for you.