Mark Amin’s Good Kill Explores the Dark Side of Modern Drone Warfare

Those who love modern military docudramas, and the ethical and moral dilemmas faced by the military and their families will not be disappointed with Good Kill. This movie explores the world of drone warfare, where the soldiers are not in the field sweating and dodging bullets and rocket-propelled grenades.  Instead, this world of warfare takes place in near and remote places, with soldiers staring at small screens with crosshairs, with satellite images of desert villages that are soon reduced to places of chaos, with buildings destroyed and body parts strewn about.

Directed by Andrew Niccol and produced by Voltage Pictures, Dune Film and Mark Amin’s Sobini Films, this film is set for release tomorrow in select cities across the country.  This critically-acclaimed film stars Ethan Hawke as Air Force Major Tommy Egan.  In what many critics believe is one of his best roles thus far in his career, Hawke’s character has endured many tours of duty in the Middle East as a combat pilot.  His latest assignment is as the trigger man of a small company of drone operators.  His wife Molly, played by January Jones, has many of the usual issues wives of deployed military men have.  She often wonders why he cannot be happy with his newest assignment, since he is finally close to his family and has the freedom to spend more time with them. http://college.ku.edu/alumni/change/distinguished/amin

Commanding Officer Jack Johns, played by a very capable Bruce Greenwood, drives the early action of the film when he brings in a new co-pilot, Suarez, played by Zoe Kravitz.  Their unit is then placed under the direction of the CIA to run covert missions that are not subject to standard military procedures.  Some of the action then turns dark with missions carried out against people attending funerals, or who are trying to dig out survivors from earlier strikes.  For these reasons, this is not a movie for small children or the faint of heart.

Tommy Egan struggles through much of the film in wanting to return to his role as an active combat pilot.  He also struggles with the ethics of killing people halfway across the globe from his comfortable and safe base in Las Vegas.  As the film moves along, he grows more and more reticent about his role, drowning his sorrows in alcohol and withdrawing from his wife and children.  This movie does a good job in presenting arguments both for, and against drone warfare, and it cannot be characterized as either anti-military, or anti-United States.  The viewer will come to have sympathy for Egan, as it becomes clear as the film moves on that he will never return to his duty as an active pilot, and as his home life slowly deteriorates.

Egan’s struggles are contrasted by the actions of many of the supporting characters of the film, who have no problem at all, and are rather gung-ho, in carrying out their duties to rain down death and destruction one-half a world away.   Good Kill does an excellent job of giving viewers a close-up view behind the scenes of the often misunderstood drone warfare program, and it has received mostly stellar reviews from some of the most tough movie critics in the land.

The problem most people who have viewed the movie have is with the conclusion, with many feeling that is too much in contrast to the logical, and thoughtful main body of the film.  But that does not take away from the fact that the majority of the film is entertaining, if one does not enter the theater thinking this is going to be a do good, feel good, Go USA type of film.  All in all, this is an excellent movie for the person who loves movies that make them think, on both a logical and moral basis.