The following review makes reference to the 2015 film Eye in the Sky, and does not contain spoilers of any type.

Year: 2015 Category: Thriller. Director: Gavin Hood. Cast: Helen Mirren, Alan Rickman, Aaron Paul, Barkhad Abdi, Iain Glen, Phoebe Fox, Carl Beukes, Richard McCabe, Tyrone Keogh, Babou Ceesay, James Alexander, Lex King, Daniel Fox, John Heffernan, Luke Tyler, Jeremy Northam, Gavin Hood.

The Colonel Katherine Powell, a British military intelligence officer, leads a secret operation to capture a group of terrorists in Nairobi, Kenya. When she realizes that the terrorists are on a suicide mission, she must change her plans from "capture" to "kill". The American drone pilot Steve Watts is ordered to destroy the refuge where the terrorists are, but a girl of nine years old enters the area.

The film narrates basically a single event, three high-profile terrorists are identified in Kenya, the army and intelligence of the United Kingdom working cooperatively with the United States and the Kenyan government follow them with advanced technology, such as an MQ-9 Reaper or robots to remote control with appearance of beetles and birds. The terrorists are in a house that is inside a perimeter controlled by armed men, where they prepare to carry out a suicide attack, so the mission changes, the commanding officer no longer wishes to capture them but to kill them using a Hellfire missile, the only problem is the collateral damage, a young girl who sells the bread her mother makes is within the impact area, something that initiates a moral, ethical, legal and political discussion that makes everyone involved in the operation doubt that puts the whole mission at risk.

When I decided to watch the movie I thought I would see something with many special effects, airplanes doing visually great things and a lot of action, however, it was not like that, what I found is a film that basically narrates all the possible problems and consequences that exist at the moment of take a military decision, there is not much action here, it's more about creating tension and getting the viewer involved in the ethical discussion that the film proposes. Would you attack with a missile a group of terrorists who are preparing to carry out an attack that will kill many, knowing that the impact of the missile probably kills an innocent girl?

In addition the film also shows the reality of modern military operations, where an attack can be authorized and executed by people who are in different parts of the world and who will hardly pay the immediate consequences of their actions.

I think it's a brilliant thriller that gets the viewer involved in the discussion and causes him to reflect on what he's seeing. The idea is not original, but even so it is not badly developed. The director Gavin Hood, who previously directed Ender's Game, does it very well here, the film starts without generating much interest, but after the initial minutes the rhythm is good and the tension is constant.

The performances are fine but nobody does anything out of the ordinary. I decided to watch the film because Aaron Paul participates in it, however, its role is little here, although there is balance in the time that the different actors appear on the screen. I think everyone makes a decent performance, especially at the moment of greatest dramatic tension, but as I said, nothing out of the ordinary.

In short, it is a very entertaining but not fun film, entertaining in the sense that it gets the viewer to participate in the ethical dilemma that the characters have, but there are no moments to laugh here, the narrative is too dramatic and the problem is very serious. Some will accuse the film of being military propaganda, but I prefer to focus on the moral dilemma. We often say that movies are bread and games to prevent us from seeing the reality of our world, on this occasion, the film tries to show us the complexity of war in its most modern forms.

The film has an excellent direction, little budget but excellent rhythm, with a narratively precise script, whose complexity is not in the dramatic twists or in the evolution of the characters but in the ethics surrounding the military action. Decent performances but nothing special, and an end that invites reflection on the events seen on the screen. At the time of publishing this review the film is available in the Netflix catalog of the following countries: Canada, India, Japan and Sweden.