Alan Rickman's Final Movie Doesn't Fly

When the first Hellfire drone missile launched in 2001, it missed, and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar got out alive. Hollywood's cultural criticism is rarely as accurate as military drone strikes claim to be, so it's no surprise that Eye in the Sky, the year's first movie on the ethics of drones and the last film featuring Alan Rickman, misses its mark too.

The film's narrative is succinct: British Col. Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren) tracks infamous terrorists to a house in Nairobi, Kenya. To stop the suicide bombing they're planning, Powell orders a Predator drone to destroy the house. The only problem is a small, hula-hooping neighbor girl. When she sets up a table selling bread on the edge of the missile's blast radius, the high risk of collateral damage makes the drone's American pilot (Aaron Paul) stall for as long as possible.

The plot arc is more of a plot sine wave. Every 15 minutes, the girl's life seems doomed. Then some new circumstance delays the strike. This pattern is an exasperating running joke, with the withering Lt. Gen. Frank Benson (Rickman as a wandless Professor Snape in olive drab) throwing up his hands and staring down the people who just refuse to blow that little girl up already.

It's not Rickman's fault (RIP) that his dry humor is out of place in a movie about the ethics of vaporizing people with missiles. Despite serviceable performances, Rickman, Mirren and Paul get dragged down by a poorly constructed script. What can you expect from a movie about the cost of war in Kenya in which white people speak 95 percent of the lines?

Eye in the Sky didn't have to be Pulitzer-worthy political commentary if it at least succeeded at entertainment. Shooter wasn't thoughtful, but it had Mark Wahlberg on a 'roidless Rambo spree. Here, the effects look cheap, the action scenes are unmemorable, and the plot regularly blows up its own tension—and the audience's interest—with missiles raining ignorantly down from the heavens.

Critic's Grade: C+

See it: Eye in the Sky is rated R. It opens Friday, March 11.

Willamette Week