I started watching a random free sci-fi movie on Prime Video. I’m still thinking about it days later
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Here’s a love story you haven’t seen before: A man falls for a woman he can only watch through the camera of an armed robot spider, from a control room half a world away. That is the haunting, unconventional setup of “Eye on Juliet,” a quiet 2017 drama almost nobody caught, and right now you can stream it for free.
Written and directed by Canadian filmmaker Kim Nguyen — whose earlier feature “War Witch” earned an Oscar nomination — the film premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it took home the Fedora Award for Best Film. Joe Cole, best known for his gritty, tough-guy turns in “Peaky Blinders” and “Gangs of London,” plays completely against type here as a lonely, soft-spoken drone operator.
Opposite him, Lina El Arabi brings immense heart to the young woman on the other side of the lens. Rather than relying on quippy, familiar romance tropes, this genuinely tender film delivers a heartbreaking story about two people trying to connect across an impossible distance. And it’s streaming free on Prime Video — no subscription needed!
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What is ‘Eye on Juliet’ about?
Gordon (Joe Cole) works an interesting yet seemingly dead-end job in Detroit. From a dim control room, he pilots “hexapods,” six-legged robotic drones with cameras and guns, that patrol an oil pipeline in an unnamed stretch of North African desert thousands of miles away. He’s just been dumped, so he spends his shifts staring at surveillance feeds of sand while feeling just as empty inside.
Then a young woman wanders into frame. Ayusha (Lina El Arabi) happens to look a lot like his ex, and Gordon starts watching her instead of the pipeline. He soon works out that she’s being forced into a marriage with a much older man when she’s secretly in love with someone her own age named Karim.
What starts as idle, faintly creepy surveillance becomes something else once Gordon starts using the drone to communicate with her directly. The robot essentially turns into his eyes, his voice, and eventually his hands.
From opposite sides of the planet, through a machine built to threaten people rather than help them, the two form a fragile connection. And once Gordon decides Ayusha shouldn’t have to marry a stranger, the real question becomes how much a man watching through a robot’s eyes can actually change a life he’ll never physically touch.
Why I recommend streaming ‘Eye on Juliet’
We’ve never had more ways to reach each other, but plenty of us have never felt further apart for it. “Eye on Juliet” takes that ache and builds an entire romance around it, telling its love story through screens and a surveillance drone.
The robot has a camera, so Gordon and Ayusha are filmed in real shot/reverse-shot, cutting between a control room in America and a desert in Morocco as if they’re standing across from each other, when they’re thousands of miles apart. The hexapods themselves are strangely menacing, and Timber Timbre’s score gives the whole thing a low, dreamy hum that makes the entire story feel a bit odd with some sinister undertones.
Joe Cole underplays Gordon beautifully, all slumped shoulders and swallowed feeling. Lina El Arabi does the harder job of making Ayusha feel like a real person instead of a prize to be won. The film doesn’t entirely dodge that trap, and there’s a rescue-fantasy streak not everyone will love. Still, it sticks the landing and manages to pull out a heartwarming conclusion that will linger with you long after the credits roll.
Feeling romantic and need something free to watch? If you want something off the beaten path to stream during your next movie night, this is a worthy pick that doesn’t require a subscription.
Stream “Eye on Juliet” free on Prime Video now
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