EYE IN THE SKY

EYE IN THE SKY. Gavin Hood, dir. Guy Hibbert, script. Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul, Alan Rickman, featured players. UK: eOne Films et al. (prod.) / Entertainment One (UK dist.), Bleecker Street Media (USA), 2015 (US release, 2016). See IMDb citation for complex production and distribution.[1]

Not SF but what might be called a cinematic problem play, summarized by Bleecker Street on IMDb: "EYE IN THE SKY stars Helen Mirren as Colonel Katherine Powell, a UK-based military officer in command of a top secret drone operation to capture terrorists in Kenya. Through remote surveillance and on-the-ground intel, Powell discovers the targets are planning a suicide bombing and the mission escalates from 'capture' to 'kill.' But as American pilot Steve Watts (Aaron Paul) is about to engage, a nine-year old girl enters the kill zone triggering an international dispute, reaching the highest levels of US and British government, over the moral, political, and personal implications of modern warfare." Significant here for two actual or planned real-world surveillance devices in addition to those on the drone: a camera in a robotic hummingbird[2] and in a large but not giant robotic insect that looks like one of the many species of beetle but is not a real-world cyborg beetle.[3] Note for trope of "surveillance bug"[4] and the fairly common association of insects and robots.

RDE 14Ap16