Director: Gavin Hood
Year Released: 2015
Rating: 2.0
A joint task force involving the Kenyan military (including Barkhad Abdi), the U.K. (led by Alan Rickman and Helen Mirren) and the United States (with Aaron Paul as the operator of a missile-armed Reaper drone) track down a group of terrorists in Nairobi but argue back and forth as to whether or not they should blow up the structure they're in and risk the life of a young girl selling bread nearby. It's a movie version of the Trolley Problem (that's become an Internet in-joke of late) - do we eliminate the suicide bombers and take a chance on the fate of the girl or not fire and hope the baddies can be dealt with in another way? - done cheaply: of course the little kid likes her hula-hoop and is cheerful and of course she has a poor but open-minded father who fixes bicycles and hates extremists ... and of course there's live footage of the terrorists with suicide bomb vests recording their dumb videos (it's all such easy audience manipulation). Guess what? The 'good guys' push the trigger ... and the girl is killed (but know they had the best intentions for society at large!). Rickman, in one of his last roles, is forceful ... no surprise there.
