“Never ask a soldier the cost of war” is what the late Alan Rickman says as leaves his headquarters during the heart-pounding new thriller Eye In The Sky directed by Gavin Hood. The film asks us countless times “what is the cost of war?” As Helen Mirren plays a covert colonel whose sole ‘mission’ escalades between ‘moral’ and ‘anguish’. It’s a messy situation in an attempt to kill terrorists who are strapping on suicide vests in the outskirts of desolated village – a small Kenyan girl (probably about 5 or 6) is most certainly within the blast radius of a drone overhead that is set to wipe out the threat – the movie then becomes a political grandstand on the cost of collateral damage. Hood allows for a lot of the shadow of ambiguity to get tossed around, which helps elevate the material to exciting new heights. ​

The cast is rounded out by the exceptionally phenomenal Alan Rickman (in his final onscreen appearance – he will be heard this summer in Alice Through The Looking Glass) Aaron Paul, of Breaking Bad fame, plays the pilot behind the “eye in the sky” where he holds the detonator to decimate the terrorists, only to crumble under the pressure of the little girl in the cross-hairs. You wait for the obligatory “I can’t do this” speech to come up in the film, thankfully it never does. Instead Paul is left to deal with the situation in as realistic a way as possible, asking for CD data, and throwing rule book policies in Mirren’s face. Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips) is avoiding typecasting here as the man on the ground helping the good guys win the war. He even uses a nifty gadget that is designed to look like a beetle but is really a slick surveillance camera.

That’s not to say there have been other war stories told with a better narrative landscape than the one here, because that’s not true. Eye In The Sky offers up some clear shade by the US government and their handling of peculiar situations. The initial scenes when we are watching the terrorist action unfold are daunting to a pulp, and the film is not necessarily groundbreaking in the landscape it does feature, but at least it dares to be ambitious. Of course, Alan Rickman steals the entire movie with his sense of dry humor which he showcased best in earlier films like Die Hard or Galaxy Quest, to his cloud-stomping final speech which is just a shot to the gut. This film will forever be a reminder to the legacy this man leaves behind, and a constant flashback of an amazing talent we have lost.  A-