Written by Guy Hibbert, who wrote Prime Suspect 4: The Scent of Darkness (I guess I forgot to review that one when we watched them all in 2015) in 1995, and more recently One Child and A United Kingdom. Opens with a quote from Aeschylus: "In war, truth is the first casualty" - which is good and thought-provoking, but doesn't really have anything to do with what follows.
A simple and focused film is almost like a play in that it cuts between several static locations whilst attempting to take out terror suspects from above - and neatly uses it as a debate for all sides of a controversial issue. Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman (his final performance) represent the UK military, Aaron Paul and Phoebe Fox are the (somewhat too emotional) people with their fingers on the button, Barkhad Abdi the man on the ground, Iain Glen, Richard McCabe, Monica Dolan and Jeremy Northam represent politics, Babou Ceesay is a conflicted number cruncher.
A little girl selling bread makes an unlikely but highly effective focus of tension.
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