"Flying Blind" plays like an inverted "Basic Instinct": the plot; high-stakes intrigue and sex are still there, but the male/female dynamic has been reversed. The core relationship has been tweaked to encompass both a greater age gap as well as an inter-racial dynamic, while the central question is now not 'did SHE do it?' but 'is HE a terrorist?'. It sounds like a recipe for disaster, but as a stand-alone thriller that does its best to raise the issue of military drone strikes whilst keeping away from stereotypes, there is enough of a kick to its story and enough ambiguity surrounding its central question of whether a key character is who they say they are to actually rather enjoy it.
Helen McCrory plays Frankie: a cold, middle-aged woman who works in the British aerospace industry developing drone technology for a BAE/Lockheed Martin style military defence company. She refuses to suffer fools, and is more than adept at holding her own in conversation when confronted by stern-face chauvinistic military types in full uniform who try to knock it into her that drones are, in fact, "remotely piloted air systems". She is equally swift to bat away their immense displeasures at the technological advances falling too far behind schedule. In her spare time, she lectures in engineering at a local university - when a random student asks her of the moral implications of drone production, she merely states that she is "not a philosopher" and is "more interested in flight".
These character traits and outlooks are then essentially challenged for the remainder of the film when a young Muslim student named Kahil (Najib Oudghiri) walks into her life - first, when she locks herself out of her car in the car-park and then when casually out and around in the town centre. He seems polite, even well-spoken, and is a major leap from the men presently in her life: of whom seem to consist of the same suited office-dwelling co-worker and the aforementioned rigid military types. Kahil is, comparatively, quite exotic.
Whether the film has Frankie fall for Kahil too quickly is both arguable as well as beside the point - a chance meeting and a kebab later, we find our heroine chasing after him, all gooey and lovey, and far from the icy battle-axe she was in earlier scenes. Indeed, it isn't long before the two are all over one another - Frankie supposedly liberated from her stressful desk-job and demanding peers, and Kahil merely content with the basic satisfaction of the sex.
It is that stalwart Kenneth Cranham, playing Frankie's dad, whom the film allows to clunk into the storyline the correlation between Kahil's ethnicity (he is Algerian) and the nature of Frankie's work (designing drones, which kill hundreds of Muslims every year in conflict). We do not believe for a second that it hadn't occurred to Frankie yet, but what it does is essentially tee up the film's burning core: is Kahil who he says he is, a harmless young Arab man who is able to write poetry who genuinely has feelings for Frankie, or something more sinister merely looking to exploit Frankie?
"Flying Blind" has a great deal of fun with its premise and it is surprising as to how well it works when it is in its absolute zenith. Seemingly a liberal feminist of the boomer generation, Frankie is suddenly plunged into a decision she thought she had answered years ago: does she choose love for a man over a career-path she has always been devoted to if partner-and-job are actually incompatible? Later on, she is placed into even more of an ethical entanglement when she has good reason to alert the police on a suspicion which would almost certainly spell the end of their romance yet save lives.
Indeed, at its core the film is Frankie's being challenged of a pre-existing outlook, that she does not see herself as a "philosopher" who has to think too greatly about what she does and the consequences of what she designs - so much for only being interested in flight. "Flying Blind" will not uproot trees, nor will it especially force its way into the canon of your favourite films, but it is worth seeing.
