The Good Kill is the story of US fighter pilot, Major Tommy Egan played by Ethan Hawke, who has been flying F16s in Iraq and Afghanistan. Physically rotated back home to the USA he is still flying missions in South East Asia but he is now doing it from as a drone pilot 7,000 miles away in Nevada.
Unlike when he was posted abroad Egan goes home to his wife and kids in the Nevada suburbs after putting in eight hours fighting with the Taliban. But this is not a training exercise oe a computer game. The enemy and the kills are all too real. The situation is increasingly schizophrenic and Egan starts to disconnect from real life.
A large part of his job is surveillance so he watches his target interact with family and friends, eating and sleeping and carrying on with daily life until he gets the order to kill his target. As the CIA demands ever higher levels of kills Egan begins to disintegrate psychologically. After his fighter pilot experiences in the field the lack of any real peril or involvement is making him unravel while at the same time Niccol involves us in a character study of Egan as a man. We are not sure if it is a moral objection or the lack of the adrenaline rush that Egan is really missing being 7000 miles away from his kill.
Combat does not really cover the definition of this stealth surveillance and one-sided assassination of the target without any judge, jury or declared war on the country the target inhabits. Egan begins to question the morality of the situation.
Writer-director Niccol asks his audience to question the morality of the situation as well as the dangers of the whole surveillance culture. Niccol says: “Good Kill is about the moral conflicts and dilemmas of using this new technology. The film demonstrates how precise the strikes can be, how troops can be protected and how civilian deaths are minimized. But Tommy is starting to question the mission. Is he creating more terrorists than he’s killing? Is he now engaged in a war without end?”
The dangers of the surveillance culture and computer game-style warfare have been explored before by Niccol as a scriptwriter in The Truman Show and in his 1997 directorial debut Gattaca.
But with the revelations of Edward Snowden and the increasingly hi-tech never-ending war against the jihadist hydra monster The Good Kill treads into territory that has never been more relevant. Niccol’s competent script and directing is supported by excellent performances by Ethan Hawke in the leading role and Zoë Kravitz as co-pilot Suarez.
With Ethan Hawke lending star power and a tightly woven storyline to gives the film dramatic power The Good Kill looks set to attract major box office on its release.
Credits: (USA)
Director/writer: Andres Niccol
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Bruce Greenwood, January Jones, Zoë Kravitz, Jake Abel
