It’s taut, tense, beautifully acted and plotted and eventually stolen by Alan Rickman in the last live action movie he made before his death.

So why the hell has Eye in the Sky laboured to find an audience in Australia?

Have we become so used to dumbed down Hollywood confections that anything remotely complex is just too bloody hard?

Audiences will line up around the block for the latest instalment of endless superhero/villain franchises, but when a movie traverses the rocky terrain of modern warfare where villainy and heroism are murkier concepts, they take a walk.

So, of course, we end up with the films we deserve.

Eye in the Sky had a limited opening across Australia on March 24 and in the three weeks since has taken just over $1.25 million at the box office.

At the same time, Batman v Superman, despite lukewarm reviews, has grossed almost 20 times that. (My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 and Kung Fu Panda 3 have taken $10 million and $7 million respectively in the same time too. Good grief.)

I’m the first to admit Eye in the Sky is not everyone’s idea of a date movie, but it’s 20 times better than the latest superhero slugfest. So what’s the message here?

The most obvious answer is that the material is too confronting.

Played out on four continents, Eye in the Sky sees a terrorist capture mission overseen by Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren) turn into a kill operation when local intelligence establishes that two suicide bombers are preparing to do their worst in Nairobi, Kenya.

Suddenly Mirren and her boss, Lt General Frank Benson (Rickman) have to convince a war-room full of nervous politicians in London that a drone strike is justified, even though “collateral damage” might claim the lives of innocents near the strike zone.

Better to lose one or two there, than 80 of them later in a crowded mall or airport, they reason.

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As the politicians search for a way through an increasingly dense and dangerous ethical thicket, Rickman slowly steals the movie. It’s something of an achievement given he’s up against the always compelling Mirren.

Rickman’s understated urging of his squeamish bosses had me recalling Henry Fonda’s Juror 8 in 12 Angry Men. He will surely get a Best Supporting Actor nomination in next year’s Oscars and it will be entirely justified. (He gets to deliver the movie’s killer next-to-last line too with a mix of disdain and conviction he always seemed to handle effortlessly.)

Ultimately, Eye in the Sky’s plot sits at the intersection of modern warfare’s most troubling weapons – suicide bombers and the drone strikes deployed to stop them.

As entertainment, it sits uneasily between escapist pap and confronting documentary. Which is to say, it forces us to think and, occasionally, shift uneasily in our seats. Which might be the problem.