GOOD KILL: 3 ½ STARS. “a complex look at a complex subject.”
I blew away six Taliban in Pakistan just today,” says Tom Egan (Ethan Hawke) in the war film “Good Kill,” “and now I’m going home to BBQ.” Welcome to the world of drone warfare, the latest, deadliest weapon in the war on terror.
Air Force pilot Egan is a six-tour vet with 3000 hours logged in F-16s, now stationed in Las Vegas behind a drone control console. He’s a world away from the action, commandeering drones hovering 10,000 feet above their victims. “It’s like going from a Ferrari to a Ford Fiesta,” says his commanding office (Bruce Greenwood). Egan wants out of the comfortable air-conditioned A/V cubicle and back into the cockpit. “I am a pilot,” he says, “and I am not flying.” As his frustrations grow, his marriage crumbles and the psychological effects of the job wear on Egan who doubts the morality of long distance death.
Director Andrew Niccol keeps a steady hand as he unfurls the dehumanizing effects of “first-person shooter” war. Egan and crew take their orders from a cool-and-calm disembodied voice from CIA headquarters in Langley who issues “permission to prosecute” in ever increasing doses. As the drone strikes increase in number—“Out of necessity this war on terror has become borderless,” says the voice.—Niccol keeps the deliberate pace, like a well trained pilot who never loses his cool in battle.
Instead the verbal action heats up. This isn’t a war film in the traditional sense, just as drone warfare isn’t traditional battle. Despite the tense drone attack sequences—seen through a computer monitor—“Good Kill” is a war of words. Niccol began as a writer and uses his command of words to raise questions regarding the consequences of remote control death—“We are the best recruitment tool Al-Qaeda ever had,” says Vera Suarez (Zoë Kravitz)—to the moral implications of their actions—“Was that a war crime, sir?”
Hawke simmers, a slow boil of emotions as his standards, both personal and professional are slowly eroded. It’s an intense performance that grounds some of the melodrama—i.e.: Greenwood solemnly intoning, “A lot of love went into that hate.”—that occasionally seeps into the script.
“Good Kill” is a complex look at a complex subject that doesn’t offer answers as much as it does inspire questions.