By Jake Howell jake.howell@utoronto.ca
The Torontonian reviews Good Kill
Based on actual events and unapologetically anti-war, Andrew Nicoll’s Good Kill is an effective if slightly overlong look at the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as military lightning strikes and the psychological toll the violence takes on the men and women who “pilot” them, especially as the drone program evolves into something they never signed up for.
Continuing with what will likely be the biggest year of his career, Ethan Hawke plays Major Tommy Egan, a booze-chugging veteran who has seen multiple tours of combat but finds himself in the middle of his third drone tour. That means he spends a lot of time in an air-conditioned trailer on a military base in Nevada, Starbucks in hand, piloting a drone that is 7000 miles away, which is about as detached from the dangers of war as you can concievably get. But the real world impacts of his missiles are rending flesh and blood, and the film opens with Egan’s eye flitting back and forth as he looks for his latest target. His partner lasers the impact zone, Egan fires the trigger, and moments later—halfway across the world in a remote location in Afghanistan—hellfire rains down upon a supposed terrorist.
Egan, like godly Zeus, throws bolts from the blue. “Good kill,” he confirms, scanning the desolation.
Desensitized from the violence yet nonetheless damaged by his job, Egan’s life at home is turbulent, and his loyal wife (January Jones) feels like her husband is more vacant than he was when he was actually overseas. “Does he ever get mad?” a friend asks, watching Egan barbecue mutely after coming home from wiping six Taliban from the face of the earth. “When he gets mad, he only gets more quiet,” his wife says. The film unravels this now-broken marriage to middling effect.
Written by Nicoll and riddled with all the appropriate military jargon like “rules of engagement” and “painting the target,” his script compliments the disconnected horrors of these drone strikes by underlining the ironies of this cyclical, cynical conflict. Lines like “I’ve been a pilot before Pontius” keep us engaged throughout the film’s terrible everyday scenarios, like when Egan and company witness a local Afghan—not related to the Taliban or listed in any of their intel—repeatedly rape and beat a woman. Though they’re able to eliminate the rapist in a split second with a missile right between his eyes, Egan’s commander (played by Bruce Greenwood) says: “he’s a bad guy, but he’s not our bad guy.”
The film takes an uncomfortable turn when the CIA takes control of the drone program, requesting target strikes that continue to feel more and more unjust. “Sir, was that a war crime?” Egan’s morally-sober assistant Suarez (Zoe Kravitz) whimpers at one point. A monotonous voice in the form of a speakerphone—referred to only as Langley—requests orders that leave the drone pilots questioning everything about their job. Later, Egan refrains from uttering “good kill” after his strikes entirely.
This is the kind of movie you’d only watch once, given its heavyhandedness. That said, when Bruce Greenwood states that drone piloting “isn’t goddamn Playstation” to a horde of new recruits, you know the film is touching on some murky, real-world gray areas about the future of warfare. Except the future of warfare is actually the here-and-now of warfare, and Nicoll’s film assists in a layman understanding of the program (along with Wikileaks footage you may have seen). Egan’s failing marriage may be a lackluster B-story, but Ethan Hawke’s characteristically strong performance as a emotionally distanced drone pilot is worth your attention.
