Good Kill. (15.)
Directed by Andrew Niccol.
Starring Ethan Hawke, Bruce Greenwood, January Jones, Zoe Kravitz and Jake Abe. 102 mins.
The use of a weapon always involves a time lag. Be it a gun or a spear or a sword, there is always that element of aiming where you think the person will be rather than where they are. In the case of a drone pilot, aiming missiles from 10,000 feet or more in the air, the lag can be around 10 seconds. Good Kill is a film about drone warfare, the first really to truly address the new reality of war. As such time lags are a very important part of it: it's about the lag between the reality of of what war has become and our understanding of what war has become. In traditional anti-war films we were invited to be repulsed at the spectacle of men being sent off to foreign land to kill people. In modern anti war films we are expected to be horrified that they are not.
The morality of it all is terribly convoluted but the dramatic ironies fall into place with casual ease. Ethan Hawke is an experienced air force pilot who now spends his days sitting in a metal cabin in a lot in the desert around Las Vegas, blasting away at terrorist targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan or the Yemen. He does the day shift at the War on Terror then goes back to the wife and kids for a barbeque, or maybe a sneaky night off on the Vegas strip. Hawke though misses flying and is pressing for a return to piloting real planes. Meanwhile he is hitting the booze hard and his relationship with his wife (Jones) and kids is crumbling because he can't communicate with them. Then, to make matters worse, the CIA take over the target selection and the ethics get even murkier.
Good Kill is a simple, straightforward film because it is all there waiting for it, and nobody has covered it before.* The lines kind of right themselves: “Don't ask me if this is a just war, it is just war,” “Drones aren't going anywhere, they're going everywhere.” Maybe the film is a little too pleased with itself when it shoehorns in this exchange between a traffic cop and Hawke: “How's the war on terror going?” “Much like the war on drugs.”
Hawke does a growly voice for the role and is convincing though Greenwood as his sympathetic commanding officer gets all the best lines and is the most memorable performance. Niccol (Gattaca, script of Truman Show) gives us beautiful clear crisp images to fix on such as the endless, beautiful clear desert skies that they live and work under.
People get very agitated about drone warfare and yet it seems like what it boils down to is that it is not playing fair, that planes full of body bags are a bit more sporting. The tragedy of Hawke's character is that he is not allowed to be Tom Cruise in Top Gun anymore. Hold on, didn't we hate Tom Cruise as being the epitome of glib, jingoistic American imperialism? Couldn’t it be that what he really objects to is that now he has to look at, in great detail, the people he is killing and scrutinise the mayhem he has caused afterwards? And that the fighting man has lost his sense of individualism – they are just obeying orders and have no gung-ho input into how they do it.
All the way through they have to wear their uniforms, even though they are sitting in a box shooting at an enemy that doesn't wear any. It's that time lag factor again – this isn't really a job for military men at all. Having them in uniform as they sit around effectively playing video games is an anachronism. It reminds me of a gentlemen at a rugby club I played for as a kid who got all dressed up in evening wear to take his wife to the cinema to see Death Wish 2.
The film does though touch on the real issues, which is that given that the west theoretically has a great advantage in this war is it using it effectively? And now that drone warfare is a reality where will it all end? A couple of times Niccol uses shots from above to look down on his characters as they drive down the freeway or stand in their garden and the hint seems to be that this new form or warfare, that is currently so very distant and remote from our lives will one day be very much part of it; the age of total war is on its way.
*Actually, the first film on the topic was probably Wim Wender's The End Of Violence in 1997, a fairly dreadful film which imagined a system of state control that could kill people from the sky.
Good Kill. (15.)
Directed by Andrew Niccol.
Starring Ethan Hawke, Bruce Greenwood, January Jones, Zoe Kravitz and Jake Abe. 102 mins.
The use of a weapon always involves a time lag. Be it a gun or a spear or a sword, there is always that element of aiming where you think the person will be rather than where they are. In the case of a drone pilot, aiming missiles from 10,000 feet or more in the air, the lag can be around 10 seconds. Good Kill is a film about drone warfare, the first really to truly address the new reality of war. As such time lags are a very important part of it: it's about the lag between the reality of of what war has become and our understanding of what war has become. In traditional anti-war films we were invited to be repulsed at the spectacle of men being sent off to foreign land to kill people. In modern anti war films we are expected to be horrified that they are not.
The morality of it all is terribly convoluted but the dramatic ironies fall into place with casual ease. Ethan Hawke is an experienced air force pilot who now spends his days sitting in a metal cabin in a lot in the desert around Las Vegas, blasting away at terrorist targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan or the Yemen. He does the day shift at the War on Terror then goes back to the wife and kids for a barbeque, or maybe a sneaky night off on the Vegas strip. Hawke though misses flying and is pressing for a return to piloting real planes. Meanwhile he is hitting the booze hard and his relationship with his wife (Jones) and kids is crumbling because he can't communicate with them. Then, to make matters worse, the CIA take over the target selection and the ethics get even murkier.
Good Kill is a simple, straightforward film because it is all there waiting for it, and nobody has covered it before.* The lines kind of right themselves: “Don't ask me if this is a just war, it is just war,” “Drones aren't going anywhere, they're going everywhere.” Maybe the film is a little too pleased with itself when it shoehorns in this exchange between a traffic cop and Hawke: “How's the war on terror going?” “Much like the war on drugs.”
Hawke does a growly voice for the role and is convincing though Greenwood as his sympathetic commanding officer gets all the best lines and is the most memorable performance. Niccol (Gattaca, script of Truman Show) gives us beautiful clear crisp images to fix on such as the endless, beautiful clear desert skies that they live and work under.
People get very agitated about drone warfare and yet it seems like what it boils down to is that it is not playing fair, that planes full of body bags are a bit more sporting. The tragedy of Hawke's character is that he is not allowed to be Tom Cruise in Top Gun anymore. Hold on, didn't we hate Tom Cruise as being the epitome of glib, jingoistic American imperialism? Couldn’t it be that what he really objects to is that now he has to look at, in great detail, the people he is killing and scrutinise the mayhem he has caused afterwards? And that the fighting man has lost his sense of individualism – they are just obeying orders and have no gung-ho input into how they do it.
All the way through they have to wear their uniforms, even though they are sitting in a box shooting at an enemy that doesn't wear any. It's that time lag factor again – this isn't really a job for military men at all. Having them in uniform as they sit around effectively playing video games is an anachronism. It reminds me of a gentlemen at a rugby club I played for as a kid who got all dressed up in evening wear to take his wife to the cinema to see Death Wish 2.
The film does though touch on the real issues, which is that given that the west theoretically has a great advantage in this war is it using it effectively? And now that drone warfare is a reality where will it all end? A couple of times Niccol uses shots from above to look down on his characters as they drive down the freeway or stand in their garden and the hint seems to be that this new form or warfare, that is currently so very distant and remote from our lives will one day be very much part of it; the age of total war is on its way.
*Actually, the first film on the topic was probably Wim Wender's The End Of Violence in 1997, a fairly dreadful film which imagined a system of state control that could kill people from the sky.
