Metacritic reviews

Just as Niccol’s narrative structure is at once fraught and immaculate in its escalation of ideas and character friction, so his arguments remain ever-so-slightly oblique despite the tidiness of their presentation.

It’s "Top Gun" with gamer’s thumb. Ethan Hawke shines in a complex, satisfying character study turned combat thriller.

Niccol is working in a very stripped down and direct mode, and I think overall, it works. Good Kill is unsettling, and the entire cast does spare, unsentimental work.

Niccol weighs the human toll on both aggressor and target with intelligence and compassion, while questioning whether technological warfare is inevitably destined to be an unending cycle.

Niccol’s film takes a somber, nuanced and compelling look at the War on Terror as it is waged by U.S. drone pilots, right up until a final five minutes that, in a shower of pat resolutions and conclusions, delivers something of a surgical strike on the its credibility.

Niccol creates an atmosphere that is airless and dull, an unusual tone for a modern war film, but one that fits the subject matter perfectly.

A searching, timely drama about the dehumanising effects of waging war at a distance.

Required viewing as a critique of US foreign policy but forgettable as a drama, Good Kill is a timely warning, even if it lacks the power of the horrors it depicts.

Good Kill is a dour, claustrophobic film, offering an acute and stunningly photographed exploration of middle-American banality and moral ambivalence.

When Good Kill takes aim at US foreign policy and the advances in military technology, it creates moments of chilling and powerful drama, but this is dissipated and compromised by its mirror-punching domestic drama and its bizarre need to bring about something like a happy ending.