The Aeronauts: Deflated flight

The Aeronauts (2019) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang

This would have been a suspenseful adventure film in the 1950s or ’60s (allowing for the fact that the special effects technology required to make it, didn’t exist at the time).

Having just left the pomp and circumstance of their departure, scientist James Glaisher
(Eddie Redmayne) marvels at the showboating rowdiness of his aeronaut companion,
Amelia Wren (Felicity Jones).

Unfortunately, styles have changed in the intervening half-century, and director/co-scripter Tom Harper’s relentlessly (ahem) overblown approach feels clumsily retro and needlessly melodramatic. The script, co-written with Jack Thorne, also adds an aura of contrivance: quite unfortunate, as it undercuts the genuine marvel of authentic history.

Although claiming to be “inspired by a true adventure,” this film gives no indication that Eddie Redmayne’s character, James Glaisher, was a genuine 19th century meteorologist, aeronaut and astronomer. That makes his presence alongside Felicity Jones’ fictitious Amelia Wren a bit jarring, even though much of her character is based on earlier 19th century French aeronaut Sophie Blanchard.

(Blanchard died in 1819, when Glaisher was only 10 years old.)

The Aeronauts is set on Sept. 5, 1862, the date of Glaisher’s most famous ascent (actually in the company of fellow British aeronaut Henry Tracey Coxwell, but Jones’ Amelia Wren apparently is more cinematically pleasing). To a degree, the film takes place in real time, as the flight lasted only a couple of hours; Harper and Thorne maintain tension by intercutting this increasingly perilous action with flashbacks that shape our two lead characters, and the events that prompt their unlikely partnership.

James, a young Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, firmly believes that weather patterns can be predicted: a notion that his older colleagues find patently absurd. James insists that he can prove his theories by taking atmospheric readings at increasingly high altitudes — higher than anybody else has risen — but nobody is willing to bankroll or collaborate in such an endeavor.

Amelia, meanwhile, is a veteran aeronaut emotionally shattered by a previous flight that concluded tragically; she has withdrawn into a reclusive funk and has no intention of leaving the ground again. Her sister Antonia (Phoebe Fox) drags Amelia to a posh Meteorological Society function, where she meets James and — ultimately — is won over by his passion.

How their subsequent alliance secures financial backing is one of many details left irritatingly vague — ballooning is tremendously expensive, particularly when involving a craft of such immense size — although it seems to involve an investor played fleetingly by Robert Glenister (as Ned Chambers).

Eye in the Sky: A riveting real-world thriller

Eye in the Sky (2015) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rated R, for dramatic intensity, profanity and violent images
By Derrick Bang

Guy Hibbert’s thoughtful screenplay has the unsettling intensity of an immaculately crafted stage play.

Helen Mirren, as Col. Katherine Powell

Indeed, I can see this being a great play, even though its primary characters are spread out across the globe. An imaginative director could handle that detail, much the way Gavin Hood has choreographed this big-screen drama with such authoritative snap.

Eye in the Sky is a taut, up-to-the-minute geo-political thriller that belongs in the company of 1960s Cold War classics such as Fail Safe and Seven Days in May, and more recent efforts such as Thirteen Days and Munich. At its core, Hibbert’s script — which he wrote back in 2008, making it even more cutting-edge — is a study of actions and consequences: to what degree, if any, a desired end justifies the means to obtain it.

Hibbert’s approach is what makes the result so riveting: This is a “process thriller” very much in the mold of 2011’s Margin Call. That film gave us a talking-heads glimpse of the primary players at a Wall Street investment firm who, during the course of 24 hours, watch helplessly as their own previous actions precipitate the 2008 meltdown. You’d think such back-room financial commentary and analysis would be boring, but that was far from the case; the excellent cast brought compelling tension to every aspect of writer/director J.C. Chandor’s script.

As Margin Call was to the 2008 economic crisis, Eye in the Sky is to digital-age drone warfare.

British Col. Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren), waking early one morning at her cozy home in Sussex, assumes her decidedly un-cozy duties at a nearby military base. This is likely to be a crucial day: She has been tracking, for six years, a particularly notorious British citizen-turned-terrorist — a radicalized young woman — who is expected to attend a meeting at an Al-Shabaab safe house in a bustling Nairobi neighborhood.

As a bonus, this target is expected to be in the company of at least one other terrorist ranked high on the British/American “most wanted” list.

The developing situation is being monitored from the sky by a surveillance drone piloted by American soldiers at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, and at ground level by Nairobi anti-terrorist personnel. Facial recognition identification, if such an opportunity arises, will be confirmed by an American military analyst stationed in Hawaii. All are in constant contact with Powell.

She, in turn, passes this intel along to her commanding officer, Lt. Gen. Frank Benson (Alan Rickman, in his final performance), who is spending the day in a London conference room, where he shares these same details with upper-echelon British government overseers. The intention, at every moment, is to follow protocol and chain of command, while adhering to legal justification.

All these players are assembled to monitor a pre-approved “capture mission” that will be coordinated by the Nairobi ground troops. Powell, in charge of the operation, waits only for verification that her targets have arrived.