Eye In The Sky

‘Eye in the Sky’ is a thorough examination of modern military warfare and the complex decision making that goes on behind the scenes. The title refers to the satellite and drone technology that enables everyone involved in these types of operations to see the mission unfold in glorious detail.

The film deals us a complex scenario which sees UK based Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren) in charge of an operation to capture terrorists in Kenya. The operation is almost entirely conducted via remote surveillance but for some local intelligence provided by Jama Farah (Barkhad Abdi) who is on the ground and even he has his own highly impressive mini-drone which he skilfully pilots.

The objective of the mission soon changes when things don't go as planned and the terrorists end up in a house in a highly defended suburb of Nairobi, where they appear to be planning a suicide bombing. The mission is now eliminating everyone involved with a Hellfire missile with the added political ramifications from the fact that two of the terrorists are British and one is American.

Throughout Powell in touch with her Lieutenant General Frank Benson (Alan Rickman) who is handling the politics of the operation in Whitehall. Lawyers stand by on all sides. Meanwhile in the US drone pilots Steve Watts (Aaron Paul) and Carrie Gershon (Phoebe Fox) are preparing to launch the missile from the relative comfort of their military base. 

That is until they spot a young girl (Aisha Takow) selling bread in the vicinity who will be killed if they go ahead. This reignites communications between the various parties as the consequences are once more kicked about and sent higher up for decisions to be made and/or avoided. Never has the sale of bread been so riveting.

Who knows if this is exactly how everything really works or not, and I wouldn’t really expect them to give us the full story in any case but it’s an impressive bit of film making and a superbly engaging film.

It is also a film which will be remembered as the last one to feature the great Alan Rickman who died in January.

Eddie The Eagle

Generally I like biopics because it is a great way of finding out about the life of someone you probably didn't know that much about. The problem is of course that filmmakers are prone to re-writing history or in fact making the whole thing up in the name of entertainment.

'Eddie The Eagle' is very loosely based on the true story of British Ski Jumper Eddie Edwards. Personally, I think the true story of Edwards' quest would have been even more interesting but that's just me I guess.

The film starts with Edwards’ (Taron Egerton) childhood where he is casting off his leg braces to try to pursue his dream of going to the Olympics in any sport that he can. His mother (Jo Hartley) is highly supportive of his ambition but his sceptical father Terry (Keith Allen) isn't. His father wants him to instead follow in the family plastering tradition. Which in real life he does, as a necessity to finance his Olympic dream, but not here.

After exhausting all possible summer sports Edwards turns to the winter events where he has more success and in a very short time becomes a world class downhill skier. Sadly he is cut from the British team by the stuffy Olympic selector Dustin Target (Tim McInnerny) just before the 1984 Olympics.

So he turned to ski jumping even though he didn't know much about it and headed off to a ski jumping hill in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. It is there that he meets one of the employees at the hill, Bronson Peary (Hugh Jackman). Peary is a former ski jumper who apparently squandered his career and now drowns himself in alcohol. Which isn't true obviously.

Edwards attempts to learn to jump by trial and error while Peary repeatedly tells him to quit before he kills himself. Eventually he persuades Peary to coach him and then exploits the ancient qualification rules to qualify for the 1988 Winter Games in Calgary, something no one from Britain has done since the 1920's.

Although there has been a lot of license taken with the story it is still a pretty decent film and a total crowd pleaser. It helps that the filmmakers chose a decent actor in Taron Egerton, who clearly took the time to master the mannerisms of the real Edwards. 

With everything being played for laughs it takes some of the gloss off what a steely determined athlete Edwards really was but not all of it. His perseverance, dedication and hard work ethic still manages to shine through. For pedants like me a documentary about his life is being planned.

Edwards came last in Calgary but jumped a personal best of 71 metres, a mere 47 metres behind the Matti Nykanen who won gold. Of course Pierre de Coubertin, the foundering father of the modern Games said that the most important thing in the Olympic Games was ‘not to win but to take part’. Which, obviously, also isn’t true. Winning is everything.