Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman star in Gavin Hood’s thriller. But what are critics thinking of it? 

The Guardian: **** “While it’s often tough for Hood to add much style to the stagey set of one-room locations, he does achieve some seat-edge suspense in a number of bravura sequences.”

Evening Standard: **** “It is thoughtful, timely, expertly made and cast — and it has a serious bearing on what is happening in the wider world now.”

The Daily Mail: *** “it’s an intelligent film, well worth seeing, and with 20 per cent more subtlety it would be very good indeed. Unfortunately, it labours its point, bludgeoning us with the dilemma, as if we might not otherwise understand the moral equivocations of war.”

Irish Times:**** “Gavin Hood, director of Tsotsi, proves himself an eager disciple of Hitchcockian tension.”

Empire: **** “It’s a moral thriller more than an action one, questions fired at us like so many bullets.”

The Independent: “What’s refreshing, though, is how nuanced the film’s approach remains.”

Den of Geek: “it’s an effective, disquieting drama, which in its best moments offers a chilling insight into a world we only glancingly see or hear about in the news.”

Financial Times: *** “Director Gavin Hood works the tension and the moral uncertainty to good effect but at times the film feels schematic and too much like revision.”

Radio Times:**** “Although Eye in the Sky offers up a range of views and an impressively balanced picture, there’s no denying its “every life matters” message.”

Rolling Stone: “That Eye in the Sky is nowhere near that dry and academic is a tribute to director Gavin Hood (Tsotsi), who uses a tight script, by Guy Hibbert, to hold us in a vise and keep squeezing.”

The Mirror: *** “This film shouts its message loud and clear, but it’s still a nail-biter exploring a thoroughly topical subject.”