Eye in the Sky – Blu-Ray Movie Review

This movie tells the behind-the-scenes story of a drone strike in Nairobi. The story plays out in different venues – Helen Mirren plays a British Colonel who commands this mission working from a base in the UK, the trigger man is played by Aaron Paul who is working in an American missile facility and Barkhad Abdi is an on-ground operative in Kenya who is facilitating the mission through surveillance and other efforts at the site of the strike. The movie also featutres Alan Rickman as a British general in his last performance before his untimely passing. The theme of the movie revolves around the legality and ethics of calling in drone strikes along with the new high technology of modern warfare.

I remember seeing the trailer for this movie when I was sitting down to watch something else and one critic calld “Eye in the Sky” out as a modern-day “Dr. Strangelove”. I loved “Dr. Strangelove” so I was most excited to see “Eye in the Sky” upon its release. While I can see how one might draw the analogoy, I can’t take it too far because “Dr. Strangelove” was a vastly superior movie.

Don’t get the wrong idea, though as I really enjoyed “Eye in the Sky”. Helen Mirren’s performance stands out among all others as an excellent acting effort where she shows the strength and influence that someone in her character’s position would embody in order to be effective.

I also felt that the movie was compelling and held my attention well. And since I enjoy new technology, it was loads of fun to see what type of spying tools are available to modern soldiers. I think most of this stuff is for real and it was exciting to watch it and dream about it. The movie also touches on moral themes which made me think over some of the dilemmas in the days after watching the movie.

The video quality on this disc doesn’t have quite the pop I am used to seeing from other recent Blu-ray releases. I didn’t detect any glaring flaws in the picture so it is unclear whether some of the flatness of the image was a stylistic choice or not. Suffice it to say that the picture was not spectacular but it was indeed servicable to the needs of the film. It did not detract from my enjoyment of the movie in any way.

Audio quality is mostly measured in terms of dialog with a movie such as this and in this regard, the soundtrack was perfectly fine. But there were a few scenes involving music, effects, guns and explosions which were well managed and conveyed. There was also good environmental immersion on scenes when called for.

This is a two disc package with the Blu-ray disc, a DVD and an included Digital HD code. There are but two on-disc extras – “Perspectives” (1:22) and “Morals” (1:31). The first has some additional commentary and the second contains some behind the scenes footage.