User reviews

Good kill delivers a striking message with pinpoint accuracy. It deals with a disturbing side of war in all of its unabashed glory. The lead Ethan Hawke is excellent in his description of a man with two contrasting life, one or both of them might seem painfully surreal for him. Script is just as brash as it is refreshing, filled with military jargon and also complex questions. This is not an orthodox war movie, yet it venture farther than most.

Tom Egan (Ethan Hawke) is a drone pilot, fighting war from halfway across the globe. This seemingly non-dangerous job weighs on his mind as his relationships with his wife Molly (January Jones) suffers from the stress. The story pushes harder as the mission is gradually becoming more morally dubious and many lives are at stake. Acting is really solid, Hawke looks just like a seasoned veteran who's been drained by his service.

January Jones as his wife is mostly subtle, but she performs greatly on the more emotional scenes. It's not the normal melodramatic relationship that these two have, there's an effort to create functioning family, yet they are far too detached and distant to each other. Egan's colleagues are also excellent, especially Zoe Kravitz as Suarez, his younger co-pilot who exhibits rare virtue in the line of work and Bruce Greenwod as the commander who is as sympathetic as he is duty bound, who also delivers a mean speech.

Script is amazing, dialogues are powerfully engaging and thought provoking. It showcases suspense despite the pilots are not physically engaged in combat. The brash attitude, smart jab and fervent inquiries are presented elegantly to audiences. However, the constant switch between bird eye view and ordinary cinematography might be jarring and repetitive. While the everyday grind and heavy theme are meant to be exhausting, they can be excessively claustrophobic for the audiences.

Good Kill is not a conventional blockbuster action movie, yet it will generate profound contemplation for its emotionally taxing premise.

This movie highlights important societal issues. Drone warfare is the future and soon many drones will be flying over US soil. Not just military drones mind you, but your local police will have them as well.

The reality is this. The US kills many innocent people with drones. For example, in Pakistan alone 41 men were targeted but 1,147 people killed. If you wish, you can search on this statistic and it will take you to the article about this.

It is time America dealt with the reality of what it is doing and this film is a small step in that direction. I will not write an exhaustive review because I hate spoiling movies for people, but the movie is worth watching and more importantly, thinking about.

Greetings again from the darkness. It sounds like a screenwriter's workshop: write a story centered on a joystick, a computer monitor, a speaker phone and a shipping container. Most would surrender their Pulitzer dream and head back to the day job. Andrew Niccol, on the other hand, is a talented writer/director known for such projects as Gattaca, Lord of War, and The Truman Show. His story is set in 2010 and is "based on a true story" of drone warfare.

It could seem a bit dated to explore a topic that most have known about for years, but Niccol manages to wring out a story that keeps us engaged and more importantly, encourages discussion about the concept of "video game warfare".

Ethan Hawke plays a fighter pilot who has been reassigned as a drone pilot after serving 6 tours in Afghanistan. Each day he reports to duty on a Las Vegas base and spends 12 hours locked away in a cramped shipping container staring at a video monitor while delicately manipulating a joystick that can kill people 7000 miles away within 10 seconds. These killer drones have transformed warfare, and as far as I know, this is the first film version dedicated to the daily lives of the men and women serving this duty.

Given what we know about fighter pilots, it's not surprising that Hawke's character is crumbling emotionally … missing the danger that comes with a real cockpit. His marriage to January Jones is void of any intimacy or communication (partially due to his alcoholism), though surprisingly, Ms. Jones delivers something other than her typical cardboard cutout performance. Watching the suburban lifestyle of these two – grilling, backyard parties, math homework with the kids – brings nothing new to the screen, but tension is palpable as Hawke and his co-drone-pilot Zoe Kravitz are locked away and forced to follow morally-questionable orders from Langley (voiced by the great Peter Coyote). Put yourself on that joystick and imagine what you would do.

The story pushes us to discuss the dehumanization of war, and the idea that the Air Force is now best described as the "Chair Force". Especially interesting is the official verbiage used by the CIA and military in an effort to avoid "killing" and "innocent bystanders". Think about the fact that 3 decades have passed since we got caught up in the thrill of Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer as Top Gun pilots, and now some of the most deadly decisions are made based on a visual feed from a done hovering at 10,000 feet.

Mr. Niccol delivers a thought-provoking movie, which alone sets it above many. The drone's eye view follows not just the movements of the enemy, but also those of Hawke at home and in his car. Hawke's commanding officer is played by Bruce Greenwood, who delivers the film's best line: as Hawke is looking at Greenwood's fighter pilot photos, he says, you are probably thinking "I must have been a pilot before Pontius". It's a great line and one that reinforces how warfare has changed … from boots on the ground to recruits based on their video game savvy. Surgical strikes are the preferred manner of warfare, so watch this and ask yourself … what would you do?

Sometimes movie-making can be at its best when it does not simply entertain but poses challenging questions about contemporary issues. "Good Kill" asks us whether it is moral, legal and even effective to use Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (so-called drones) to eliminate assumed terrorists, even when collateral damage (that is, the deaths of non- terrorists) is likely or even certain. These are not academic questions: the use of drones to kill Islamic extremists has been extensive under the Obama administration in the United States and, just before I caught up with this film, my own government in Britain confirmed the use of drones to execute ISIS militants.

We see all the action - surprisingly close up and personal thanks to the amazing military technology - through the eyes of a Las Vegas-based fighter pilot turned drone pilot Major Thomas Egan. He is played by Ethan Hawke who is known for his wordy roles in films like the "Before ..." trilogy and "Boyhood" but here is laconic, showing the pained emotions in his face and movements more than in his few words - especially to his long-suffering wife Molly (January Jones).

New Zealand-born screenwriter-director Andrew Niccol ("Lord Of War") ensures that both sides of the argument are put, but there is no doubt on which side he himself sits. At the end, there is a sequence which gives the viewer some satisfaction, even a thrill, but Niccol has cleverly made us complicit in an act, the like of which we have spent most of the movie certainly questioning and possibly even condemning. "Good Kill" had limited theatrical release and success but it is a brave and honest attempt to make a political movie that raises vital issues.

Even though I hate every war and soldiers on this planet I did enjoy this movie. It's all about the ethics of war. Who has the right killing other people? And is it fair for the innocent bystanders to get killed and being considered as collateral damage? Because let's be honest, the people that are at the top of every government and/or army, the people that decide if we should go to war or not, those are the people that will never get killed because they are the biggest cowards on this planet. They risk absolutely nothing but still get the credit in case of a victory or whatever. In Good Kill Ethan Hawke plays the soldier that has to push the trigger to kill people from the other end of the world, without being in the front line. He has to follow the dubious orders from maleficent evil people that have only greed and possessions as values in their lives. I thought it was a good movie, if you want to think a little bit further then the mainstream war propaganda we see every day. A good movie if you are like me thinking that every war is completely ridiculous. If everybody would mind his own business then there would never be wars. But then again, we are humans, the parasites of this planet, and thinking this madness will ever end is just an utopian idea.

Good Kill

The good thing about drones is they give little people pilots the chance to show their stuff.

Oops, apparently the tiny aircraft in this drama are completely unmanned.

With the advent of unmanned aerial vehicles, Air Force pilot Major Egan has found himself obsolete.

Resigned to guiding the drones and initiating launch commands, Egan feels unsettled in domestic bliss with his wife (January Jones), longing to return to action.

When the CIA starts assigning the missions, Egan loses even more of his integrity.

Troubled by remote images of a Taliban soldier raping a servant woman, the ex-pilot tail spins out of control.

One of few war films to confront the cowardly notion of drone strikes, and their effect on the soldier pressing the button, Good Kill features some good performances and poses some valid questions.

In fact, the only people who can thwart these evil drones are R/C aircraft hobbyists.

Green Light

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I saw the poster in a theater and thought it would be more of an action movie, but I should have known since Ethan Hawke was in it

Hawke plays a seasoned Air Force pilot who gets grounded by the increased use of drones in the war on terror. You would think being able to serve his country safely from an office in Las Vegas and go home to his beautiful wife (played by January Jones), and kids would be ideal, as it saves American lives,but the problem is that you can't ground an airman, and the concept of making combat no different than playing Call of Duty, spins him into a nasty spiral of heavy drinking, with the thoughts of taking out terrorist and those that surround them especially, as easily as a child takes out king koopa in Mario Bros.

The movie is grim. Its so balanced in the whole politics of drone combat that no one's point shines out more than the other, which is very sad. If it was a documentary, it would be the best ever made. As a narrative, the filmmaker does an amazing job of not really taking sides, which makes you feel even more for the lead character whose deep in the conflict of doing his duty, which leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

I like Ethan Hawke, not sure if I like him in the role. The character is very well done as well as the picture, but there moments I did not see the despair in Ethan. Might be because even though it's not the action flick I thought it was, I think he played it like an action hero, just a little too Top Gun.

Zoe Kravitz has a supporting role in the movie. I thought she was good as the outspoken left wing rookie of the group, speaking on everything that's wrong with drone combat. Maybe very sexist of me to point out how the young woman is the one against it in a room full of men, or is it just sexiest that she had to play that part. Despite this it was a great role for her

This is definitely a film and not a movie about drone combat. Bruce Greenwood, who plays a captain sums it up in a speech he gives to a group of solders who look like kids about this being just like a video game that takes real lives. Something like that can get into even the strongest willed minds and the movie gives insight on that which I found entertaining, but may not be for everyone.

What I thought was interesting is the insight the movie offers on the war through drones: I think this is the first time a war movie depicts this way of fighting a war, something looking more like a video game than the dirty reality of ground-fight. So I thought the movie was very insightful, providing a clear point of view on both the ethics of such a war and the personal impact on individuals. What the film does is to take you into the virtual reality of a war where who pulls the trigger is in a bunker in Vegas and the bullet hit someone in Afghanistan; it is a virtual reality where the boundary between what is war and what is a sheer crime becomes more and more blurred, where war on terror gives the cover to commit illegal actions. At the same time, I felt the movie did not go beyond scratching the surface of the issue, it got kind of repetitive and it tried to solve the tension built throughout the whole story with a crappy happy end...

This is a, at least in my opinion, a realistic portrayal of the inner conflict of UAV "pilot" and has very real characters with very real moral conflicts, and to me, that's a very interesting setup and my kind of movie. I don't think this'll be everyone's movie though. There's no epic awesome action sequence or extremely tense moments (there is a couple of moments that are more intense than the overall feel of the movie but not super intense). The main thing this movie has going for it is the deep gray-area type of moral conflict that the characters (not just the main character) face and it makes you think about them. Towards the end however, there is a very satisfactory feel that made you feel good and "all is just in the world" and that's a big plus for a movie like this, because a lot of these types of movie end in somewhat of an empty way. Now, as stated, because this isn't a entertainment kind of movie, there are going to be people saying that the characters were boring and monotonous, etc., but really, that's what fit the movie setup, and that's what is realistic. It's definitely not for everyone, but it was my type of film and I enjoyed it and plan to rewatch it to rethink through the moral conflicts in the movie.

Years ago I remember reading a book on medieval history where the invention of the crossbow and the accuracy that it gave archers made one critic cry 'the valor of man is at end'. In the words of Al Jolson he hadn't seen anything yet, most prominently nuclear bombs.

Good Kill is a film that talks about the morality of using drones, but a lot of people seem to miss the point. Man is no longer part of the wonder of flight, that which made people like Charles Lindbergh cross the ocean, made air aces out of Eddie Rickenbacker and Baron Von Richtofen, made Chuck Yeager set speed records. Air war in movies when we entered the jet age was William Holden in The Bridges At Toko-Ri, Alan Ladd in The McConnell Story or even in Top Gun where Tom Cruise and his mates were training and matching their skills against each other.

At one time Ethan Hawke was one of those Top Guns probably enlisted during the 90s and saw real combat with real people shooting back at him. Now he wages war from the suburbs of Las Vegas in a quonset hut type shack directing pilotless drones. His skills as a pilot no longer needed. If Tom Cruise's Pete Mitchell aka Maverick was still in the Navy he too might be facing such a challenge. You can just as easily launch a drone from the deck of the USS Nimitz.

Hawke wants to get to flying again use the skills he's acquired. But in what could be the dawn of a new age he's become obsolete. War is about to become the province of video gamers and the violence rained down is real and coldly impersonal. Not even directed by the men trained to fight, but policy analysts of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia.

Hawke's issues are putting a strain on his marriage to January Jones who understandably likes having her husband home every evening. I remember a film called Sabre Jet where it showed the Air Force in its first war in Korea flying missions in Korea during the day and heading home to the base in Japan. There the wives were worried that their men might not come back, here no such worry.

Hawke also finds a kindred spirit in Zoe Kravitz who questions not just the morality of the whole idea but the fact that just as women are gaining equality in skill she's also not being needed.

For humankind what will it all mean? I guess we'll all be going deep underground in the future as drones become more readily available. Were we meant to live that way?

Good Kill is thought provoking picture about the future of something we hope doesn't have a future, war. Now is the time to bless those peacemakers.

This type of movie is just frustrating. The acting is forced, there's no chemistry, and the whole story is whiny. A Farce.

New Zealand director Andrew Niccol's newest film that found itself arriving on our shelves as a direct to DVD event is a war film with a difference and in many ways an extremely intriguing and topical examination of modern warfare that has seen the Mavericks of the real world replaced with the gamers of the fantasy world, who excel at hand eye coordination, but it's a shame Niccol's struggles to find an engaging narrative to coincide with his hot topic plot driver.

Teaming up with his Gattaca star Ethan Hawke, who it must be said is on a fairly decent streak thanks to turns in the great Predestination and the award baiting Boyhood, Niccol struggles to make Hawke's one time pilot turned drone operator Thomas Egan an engaging figure and Hawke while performing well can't help make Egan an overly appealing lead when he treats his wife Molly played by January Jones so poorly and mopes about for a majority of the films run time, bemoaning his lot in life as a man who would rather be in the skies than in a dark room in the Las Vegas outskirts killing terrorists from afar.

It's in this hugely intriguing and in many ways scary aspect of modern warfare that Niccol's film shines and it would be likely than many viewers will find themselves shocked at not only the force of drone warfare and its destructive capabilities but the prevalence of these tools of warfare that have now as stated in the movie become more popular than the production of piloted machinery like the Top Gun jets of old.

Good Kill does a great job and showcasing the uses of these technologically advanced drones and how like any modern day video game does detaches the user from the real life violence that lay at the other end of their trigger fingers and one perfectly summed up wording in Good Kill suggests that the army now looks to gaming arcades to find their next recruits suggesting that there will one day no longer be any ace pilots of old, more-so a lot of RSI suffered from members of the armed forces and pilots concerned with how much lag is present in their mission.

A unique and insightful look at modern day tactics used to fight in both wars and anti-terror operations, Good Kill flies high when dealing with the aspects of the detachment of these drones but fails to engage on an emotional level with its dramatic playing's around them all despite another fine Ethan Hawke performance and solidly scripted examinations from Niccol.

3 lag reports out of 5

It's Summer 2021 and the whole world knows about what's happening in Afghanistan. 20 years of progress (or lack thereof) depending on which eye you shut behind the red or blue lense of your 3D glasses.

And 3D glasses are essentially what we have at this time. But we don't toss them into the recycle after our matinee feature. We toss them into our pocket when we realize we need two hands to perform a task-- say driving a car...

Major Thomas Egan (played by Hawke) is a skilled drone strike operator. He is accompanied by others who verbalize their opinions on the morality of the situation. Some are red and some are blue. However, Egan reserves judgment-- at least on the surface. He is inward and withdrawn but there's no question that this job affects him deeply. But that's where the film loses focus. We learn that whether or not Egan agrees with the cost/benefits of pondering the morality of the drone strike campaign that he is at least feeling detached with the mechanics of the situation. He wants to fly a REAL plane and fulfill his duties on the ground. This is where the film could have reached another level. Unfortunately, it is distracted by awkward dialogue between him and his wife Molly (played by January Jones). Hawke is a fantastic actor and did what he could with the material. Jones falls short slightly. And for where the film goes we really need both of them in tip-top performance to feel invested. I end up not caring about his family situation as it feels hollow and shoe-horned.

Andrew Niccol, who wrote Gattaca (1997), The Truman Show (1998), The Terminal (2004), clearly did well writing characters who find themselves in increasingly uncomfortable situations yet find the courage to improvise in an attempt to leave those situations. They work because the rules of the worlds are up to him. However, in Good Kill, our protagonist is in a real-world situation. While the rules of foreign policy aren't as clear to us as we'd like them we still have an intuition that navigating them carefully is extremely important.

Because of the wooden family and lack of focus it doesn't feel like Egan has anything to risk. Therefore the conclusion drawn falls flat.

Glimpses of brilliance, but ultimately oddly structured, misplaced home drama, improbable actions by far too many, over-played evil spooks, egregious errors*, and just generally not right. A miss. A big miss. Surprised it was released it was such a mess.

*Air force does not fly off carriers. Seriously, at all.

I actually liked the flick and the acting, but did anyone actually consult the military for accuracy??? There is a scene in which Ethan Hawk's character (an Air Force F16 pilot) describes the experience of landing on a moving aircraft carrier deck. Really, an Air Force pilot lading on a Navy Carrier in an F16? I spent 22 years in Naval aviation and never once saw an Air Force pilot land on a carrier AND an F16 is not even capable of doing so. What a shame that the film crew would not have looked into such simple elements as the movie was great aside from stupid things that could have easily been rectified with a simple Google search. Are you kidding???

Major Thomas Egan (Ethan Hawke) is a F-16 pilot married to Molly (January Jones) with two kids. He is currently flying drones and going home to his family. He would like to go back to flying F-16s but the Air Force is changing. He is disconnected from his wife. His commander Lt. Colonel Jack Johns (Bruce Greenwood) bemoans the lost of real flying and the recruiting of video game playing kids. They are put under the command of a CIA controller only as a voice over the phone. New airman Vera Suarez (Zoë Kravitz) starts questioning the ethics of the missions. The constant moral ambiguity drives Thomas into a decline.

This is a movie about one moral ambiguity of war. It's not that subtle. Ethan Hawke delivers a solid performance. At the end of the day, he's killing people whether he's flying a drone or flying a fighter jet. The movie advocates against something that may not be agreeable to all audiences. It's not a great enough film to transcend that divide.

"Don't ask me if this is a just war. It's just war."

Director Andrew Niccol has proved in the past that he's capable of directing smart and intelligent sci-fi films like Gattaca, but he can also direct duds like The Host. Good Kill is on the one hand a unique war film because it focuses on the army's use of drones for fighting and the effects it has on the soldiers, but on the other hand it feels very repetitive and heavy handed with the message. Ethan Hawke plays Tom Egan, a former Air Force pilot who has served on six tours, but is currently fighting from inside a bunker near Las Vegas controlling the drones like if he was playing a video game. He is fighting the war in a way he isn't accustomed to, and the effects of each long distance kill are taking a toll on him. As opposed to his tours, he can now return home each day to his beautiful wife Molly (January Jones) and two kids. But he can't manage to separate his comfortable life at home with his service in the bunker. He's desperate to get back on a real plane, but his superior, Jack Johns (Bruce Greenwood) needs him to continue fighting the war from the control room. Tom begins to question the ethics of what he's doing, and he's also having trouble communicating his feeling to his wife whom he feels more and more distanced to. He feels like a coward at times and it's a feeling that his new partner, Vera (Zoe Kravitz) seems to share with him. When the crew begin receiving direct orders from the CIA, his ethical questioning gains more weight and his life begins to unravel at home.

The film opens with a very interesting premise and the first fifteen minutes are gripping. Ethan Hawke delivers a solid role in this character study that shows the effect that the war is taking on him, but after a while everything begins to feel extremely repetitive and the story begins to drag while continuing to hammer the nail in the same place. He questions each order he receives, he returns home to his nagging wife, he drowns himself in alcohol, and the next day the same thing happens. The film lacks subtlety and it focuses on the effects that fighting a war from home has on some of these soldiers in a rather conventional way. Ethan Hawke gives a much more subtle and restrained performance than what we are used to seeing him in. He delivers a very solid performance and we see the stress that he's going through simply by looking at the wrinkles in his forehead (which explains the use of extreme close ups on Hawke's face). He makes this a much better movie than what it really is, but it wasn't enough for me to recommend it. Niccol is basically criticizing the new video game style of war policy by portraying the ethical dilemma the soldiers go through. Good Kill lacks subtlety but we do see a side of the war we hadn't seen before.

The secondary cast doesn't get much to do here since the film basically focuses on Hawke's character. January Jones probably suffers the most due to the stereotypical character she has to play. We've seen this role of the nagging wife who doesn't understand what her husband's going through played out many times before. The melodrama at home is what ultimately hurts this film and drags it down. Zoe Kravitz and Bruce Greenwood have some interesting scenes, but the repetitive nature of the story becomes unbearable at times. Good Kill tries to say a lot, but it ultimately doesn't say much. Many have compared it to Eastwood's American Sniper, but other than the long distance killings there's not any more similarities. Niccol focuses more on the ethical dilemma of this new approach to war, but he does it by beating the audience over the head with the same idea and through the use of heavy dialogue. It's as if he's forcing the audience to interpret things his way. Niccol's greatest weakness in Good Kill is his own script overloaded with stereotypical characters which wasted an interesting premise.

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Drones with Hellfire missiles lurk for entire days over selected targets around the world. Those who control the drones, sitting in air conditioned shipping containers near Las Vegas, are close enough sometimes to see the expressions on the faces of people as the missiles strike. The film explores complications involved in the strikes including; how easy it is for innocents to end up among the dead, difficulties in determining when and who to hit, confused chains of command, how easy it is to make mistakes or corrupt the process, and how we might feel if we were in the shoes of our targets. Major Thomas Egan (Ethan Hawke) is a vodka guzzling former pilot who laments how the U.S. Air Force has become the "U.S. Chair Force." We follow him in the office and at home as he sinks into depression, indifference and fatigue, and he still controls the trigger that determines, somewhat shakily at times, who lives or dies. While the plot could use some additional creativity and depth, and the acting is somewhat shallow, the film explores a fascinating subject. Actual strikes, from Wikileaks, add an extra dose or realism. Seen at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.

If you're excited by the war on terror and want to be lectured on the morality of the drone war circa 2010 then you might enjoy this movie but only if you have a high tolerance for boredom. This movie has the soldier's stereotypical messy home life, stereotypical moral dilemmas, stereotypical PTSD and stereotypical problems with self-medication. I've liked January Jones' acting in other roles but in this role she is devoid of sincerity. Will Ethan Hawke;s character rebel from his immoral assignment? Will his marriage survive? Will he get together with the hot enlisted woman? So many questions we don't care about.