Eye In The Sky

Running time: 102 mins

Opening Cinequest with a bang! Academy award-winning director Gavin Hood will present his captivating new thriller Eye in the Sky, starring Dame Helen Mirren (The Queen, Trumbo), Alan Rickman (Harry Potter, Die Hard), Iain Glen (Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey), Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips), and Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad). Is the life of one innocent worth the lives of thousands? Colonel Katherine Powell (Mirren) is in charge of a top-secret mission: to capture, not kill, a terrorist. Although, that mission parameter changes when they discover there is an imminent threat of a suicide bombing, and they swiftly prepare to take out their target. But Powell's "eye in the sky," Steve (Paul), makes an alarming discovery that changes the entire mission: just when they're ready to pull the trigger, the situation escalates in the form of a nine-year-old girl who unknowingly enters the "kill zone." Now Powell and Lieutenant Benson (Rickman) must make a choice that, no matter the outcome, will carry lasting consequences—and they're running out of time. "The messy complexities of drone warfare trigger command decisions, moral crises, collateral damage and cover-your backside buck passing in [this] rivetingly suspenseful drama that deftly intertwines elements of ticking-clock thriller and tragic farce... Much like Dr. Strangelove, the Stanley Kubrick classic it often recalls, this teasingly hard-to-label war story has more than a fair share of scenes that generate explosive laughter—until the laughter catches in your throat..." Joe Leydon, Variety Since chosen as a Cinequest Audience Favorite for his first feature A Reasonable Man, director Gavin Hood swiftly became a major creative force in cinema, directing major releases such as the Academy Award-winning Tsotsi, Rendition, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and Ender's Game. With Eye in the Sky, he brilliantly explores controversial questions about the morals of modern warfare and the foibles of the military machine.