Review: Flawed, But Timely 'Eye In The Sky' Starring Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul, Alan Rickman, And Barkhad Abdi

Contemporary warfare seems to be conducted with all the calculation of insurance adjusters studying figures in ledgers, or sports executives applying “Moneyball”-style management techniques on their teams. Acts of war have been dehumanized by acronyms, decisions of life and death are lightened by multiple layers of bureaucracy, and now drone warfare enables the act of killing with nothing more than joystick with a trigger. It’s within a combination of those whirling elements that Gavin Hood (“Tsotsi,” “Rendition”) drops viewers for “Eye In The Sky,” and while certainly imperfect, there is something to admire about the film’s attempt to present the tangled logistics of a single military operation, where it seems everyone wants success but none of the responsibility of the tough decision making involved.

The script by Guy Hibbert (“Five Minutes In Heaven”) is as lean as it is clever, with the entire movie taking place over the course of just a few hours, as U.S. and U.K. authorities...