Good Kill

The war on terror has been shown on screen a lot lately, and heroically. The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty, Lone Survivor, American Sniper to name a few notables. But Good Kill takes a more subdued approach. No more are there boots on the ground and valiant and enviable Navy SEALs running through the streets of Fallujah or the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan. Good Kill has a more forward-thinking approach to modern warfare.

Ethan Hawke plays Major Tom Egan, a veteran Air Force pilot who has been relegated to flying drones by no fault of his own. The demand for manned aerial vehicles has dried up, so he spends twelve hours a day in a converted shipping crate on a base in the Las Vegas desert. His wife, Molly (January Jones) is bored, but loyal, and the film wastes no time showing us the monotony and complete emotional detachment of his craft and life. He watches Taliban and civilian activity all day from half a world away until ordered to drop ordinance on targets that are conveniently dehumanized then forgotten. Eventually the violence takes a toll on his conscience, and he begins his inevitable spiral into self-abuse and sabotage.

Bruce Greenwood plays the company commander (General, Colonel, who cares) Jack Johns, who delivers emotionless speeches to new recruits and recites canned dialogue to Egan and the others. It's not much of a departure from any of his other roles of the last decade, but he serves as the middle-management authority who assumes responsibility for the kills. Of course, Egan is the one who pulls the trigger, so there is an interesting moral dilemma as to who is actually responsible for killing combatants and civilians, and whose hands are wiped clean. It's not so easy to decipher.

Ethan Hawke is good, but not great. This role was ripe for some moral ambiguity, but he spent too much of it stone-faced, too cool and calm to show his true feelings. The toll of consuming dozens of human lives each day would be legitimately haunting, and the point of the film is that he's a cool cucumber who just hits his threshold. It could have been done in a more dramatic fashion. January Jones is a typical military wife; Regretful of her decisions and lonely. She's way too attractive and pathetic to play this part, but it can be forgiven because she's such a small supporting role.

Writer/director Andrew Niccol has had some seriously great ideas, particularly 1998's The Truman Show (directed by Peter Weir). Good Kill is another great idea that just simply isn't

The brilliance of the film is the suspense inherent in the reality of the theatre of warfare. Drones, as Bruce Greenwood states, are here to stay. It's a completely logical approach to war, but it also diminishes the bravado and machismo. Video feeds from thousands of feet in the air, and precision missile strikes, makes it seem more of a video game and less tense. However, the video feed delays create a visceral tension, as they are the only connection to the reality of the permanence being conducted.

I really enjoyed the tension of the live video feeds of human targets. There was a sort of natural empathy for the innocents as well as the terrorists who were being hunted without a second thought. These were the moments captured that could have been capitalized. The rest of the film however, was nothing more than B-rated war-monger fodder.

Good Kill showcases the future of American military involvement in an ambitious way, but it ends up a bit too Hollywood. The intro music, and ending kill any good chance of success for the film (no pun intended). There needed to be a bit more character development mixed in with the well-done tension-filled video feeds. Additionally, the dialogue could have used some much-needed sprucing. I was really looking forward to this film, but was mostly disappointed. 5/10.