"Eye in the Sky" Tackles Tough Questions of Modern Warfare

As an historian who has spent his professional life studying conflict, I expect to be disappointed by war movies. Because I spend so much time writing about and providing media commentary on ISIS and al-Qaeda, I avoid films on terrorism all together, confident that I will find their often simplistic depictions annoying. I was, therefore, pleasantly surprised by "Eye in the Sky," a powerful drama that portrays realistically the nature of high-tech warfare while exploring its moral and legal complexities.

Writer Guy Hibbert and director Gavin Hood have produced a thriller guaranteed to keep viewers on the edges of their seats for its entire 102 minutes. At the center of the drama stands British Colonel Katherine Powell, brilliantly played by Helen Mirren. From her command post in London, Powell is directing an operation to capture a group of terrorists whom she has been tracking for years. As Kenyan Special Forces wait to move in on the Nairobi safe house where the four suspects are located, Powell views the situation from an "eye in the sky," a U.S. Reaper drone piloted by Lieutenant Steve Watts (Aaron Paul) from a base in Nevada. The operation unravels when the targets move to another house in a Somali slum controlled by militants, a location where the Kenyan forces cannot go without creating a major violent confrontation.

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