Good Kill (2015)

Plot summary (story synopsis): It is 2010. Major Thomas Egan (Ethan Hawke) is an experienced F-16 fighter pilot. He has finished multiple overseas combat tours of duty in America's war on terror. He is now a drone pilot, surrealistically killing Taliban halfway across the globe from the safety of his control station in Nevada, then going home at the end of the day to his suburban home and his wife Molly (January Jones) and kids. 

He misses the joy and danger of flying for real and begins to feel guilty over the civilian casualties his missile strikes create. He drinks and his marriage begins to suffer even more than when he was overseas, away from his family for months, flying an F-16. 

His boss Lieutenant Colonel Jack Jones (Bruce Greenwood, doing the wise and compassionate leader shtick he did in Star Trek) has no such qualms and handles Egan's drone team with a steady hand. The team includes Zimmer (the hunky Jake Abel) and new pilot Suarez (Zoe Kravitz - Lenny's daughter, who has been getting a lot of plum supporting roles recently - Divergent, Mad Max).

Things become worse when the team works with the CIA to kill suspected Taliban, working based on the CIA's new and looser Rules of Engagement. Their only CIA contact is the mysterious Langley (voiced by Peter Coyote, who sounds deliciously like the late John Forsythe as Charlie) who they only hear over the speaker phone. Morale plummets as the team is forced by Langley to carry out what Suarez considers to be illegal, war crime, strikes.

***

Writer/director Andrew Niccol does mainly SF (Gattaca, In Time, The Host - underrated movie based on Stephenie Meyer's novel with a beautiful performance by Saoirse Ronan) and military (Lord of War) movies, though not military SF. He also wrote but did not direct The Terminal (Tom Hanks is a stateless man stuck in an airport), S1mOne (Pacino in a comedy is a fail) and The Truman Show. Whatever the subject material, he's good at pushing your buttons.

Good Kill is similar to Lord of War (Nicolas Cage is a freelance arms dealer after the collapse of the Soviet Union). Andrew Niccol did a lot of research for Lord of War and wrote a technically accurate and dramatic script (with some over-the-top visuals that work).

He does the same for Good Kill, this time on the US drone war. In Time showed him to be an economics-illiterate bleeding-heart liberal, probably because he didn't feel the need to research economics and just went with his gut. From what little I know about real drone warfare, he has painted a relatively accurate picture (super accurate by Hollywood standards) in Good Kill.

He has obviously researched drone warfare and like Lord of War, Good Kill is technically believable and has a good storyline. Unlike In Time, his handling of the issues is quite balanced, though still left of center.

I do have some complaints. For one thing, no lawyers are shown. I'm pretty sure lawyers are heavily involved in drone operations, and the movie does address legal issues (which the soldiers amateurishly try to figure out on their own).

But overall Andrew Niccol succeeds in pushing his agenda because he plays it cool and almost neutral, not overtly propagandistic. Which is how effective propaganda works. And is probably why the media hasn't made a big fuss over the movie. It's too neutral for them. Both sides of the argument are shown (though I feel there are strong arguments for drone warfare that were not presented).  

And like with Lord of War, Andrew Niccol definitely has an agenda. Unfortunately for him, Good Kill has been overtaken by events. Specifically ISIS. After ISIS, you can't convincingly argue that drone strikes are a significant cause of militant Islam (cycle-of-violence theory). 

Andrew Niccol uses music well, almost as well as Michael Mann. Gattaca and The Host had effective, evocative and memorable soundtracks. Good Kill is mainly soundtrackless, and that works too. It's an interesting choice.

And like Michael Mann, he also has a strong visual style. Halfway through The Host (I went in not knowing who the director was), I thought, Hey this looks like an Andrew Niccol movie! Like the soundtrack, he has also dialed back the visuals on Good Kill.

He lets the strong New Mexico (standing in for Nevada) desert sunlight dictate most of the look. No fancy Lord of War time-lapses here. Again, it works. A few strong images do stand out. In The Host it was the aliens' mirror-skinned vehicles and elegant white clothes, in Gattaca it was the Art Deco architecture.

In Good Kill, it is the geometric rows of wheeled shipping containers that serve as drone control stations. It's a simple but strangely powerful image that you will not forget. 

It's good to see Ethan Hawke in an Andrew Niccol movie again. Bruce Greenwood does his Star Trek fatherly shtick well. January Jones and Zoe Kravitz also handle their roles well, and look pretty while doing so. Jake Abel (who to my surprise has less of a following than Channing Tatum, but then I'm not a teen girl) has a small role as a callous, racist, gung-ho member of Egan's team and is suitably hateful. 

The acting is good but it is Andrew Niccol's script that makes the characters come alive. 

Langley is the silver-tongued devil with his polished justifications for his morally questionable orders, Suarez is the team's conscience (superego), Zimmer is the ugly American who delights in killing (id), Jones is the adult (ego). Egan is all three - ego, superego, id - rolled into one, the classic Ethan Hawke sensitive new-age hero.

Pay attention to the ending. On the surface it's a feel-good ending. I found it very disturbing. I wonder if Andrew Niccol meant it to be. Other Hollywood directors, I would have assumed that they missed the implications. Not this guy.