Major Tom Egan (Ethan Hawke) is a decorated Air-force pilot, who after five deployments, has been assigned to a base in Las Vegas, where he conducts drones strikes over Afghanistan. He hates his job and feels like a coward, but things get a whole lot worse, when the CIA commissions his team to start doing questionable jobs. Egan starts to come apart and take it out on his co-workers and family, leading to an uncertain future. IFC films are right at the top of my list right now as the absolute best in independent film. Seldom have they disappointed me, and I wouldn't describe my feelings about Good Kill as disappointed, but rather indifferent. This film, based on a true story, was exceptionally written and features a fantastic director and an amazing cast, but it also moves at a snails pace and is extremely repetitive. It's just drone strike, reaction, intervention, repeat, over and over again, followed by an ending that wasn't all that surprising. Ethan Hawke gives a powerful performance, despite the fact that he lacks the kind of emotion this role sorely needed. I understand that having Egan be this stone cold guy on the outside is a major theme, but it also makes for a lot of seemingly endless conversations and interactions. Good Kill has a lot of elements I look for in a movie, it's well written, has a cast I really enjoy, a director I know very well, still, it's lacking in emotion and levity. The film is monotonous and much longer than it had to be, all in all, not bad, but not great.

A drone pilot struggles with the morality of his job, the urge to fly again, and his marriage. Primarily this film is a debate about the ethics of drone warfare and the "War on Terror." The supporting characters are representatives of political positions, their metonymic function is to parrot the arguments for and against bombing sovereign nations, collateral damage (bombing civilians), and bombing people who might eventually bomb Americans. An overwhelming percentage of the film serves to present this argument, and while the content of their exchanges is largely substantive, it creates an inauthenticity to the film; I doubt that real military personnel engage in this kind of debate in this kind of language. Even January Jones's character becomes a mash of two types: the supportive military wife mixed with the disloyal military wife. Except for the main character, all of the others are cliched types. Ethan Hawke's performance is pretty good. His sensitive eyes and taut jaw convey Tom's conflict, but he's not served by the script, which doesn't give him too far to go in Tom's emotional and ethical development. In one scene, Tom feels guilty about bombing people from thousands of miles away, and in the next scene he feels more guilty about doing the same thing. Hawke does his best, and he's a talented actor, believable in this role, but I wish he had had more to work with. Overall, despite my complaints, Good Kill is not a bad film, but a greater focus on character would've made it better.