Good Kill DVD Review

Black Hawke Down 

Released : April 10th 2015

Certificate : 15

Director : Andrew Niccol

Cast : Ethan Hawke, January Jones, Zoe Kravitz, Bruce Greenwood

Plot : Combat pilot Thomas Egan (Hawke) has been forced to give up his day of flying in Iraq after six tours, and instead now man’s a drown control panel stationed in Nevada where his family has always lived. When Egan’s unit are placed under the command of the CIA, the morality of the missions becomes more and more questionable, creating friction both inside the unit and for Egan’s home life.

Ethan Hawke, the now four times Academy Award nominated actor and writer knuckles down for a modern day war drama with a twist, a twist that until now had not been greatly investigated by cinema. For the original project he was joined by an old directorial accomplice Andrew Niccol, famous for the writing and directing of Gattaca, a film which was one of the main stepping stones for Hawke propelling him into mainstream cinema. Good Kill also happens to be written also by Niccol, so we could have the start of a enduring director, actor combo. But Good Kill was more of Hawke’s time to shine again, as the supporting cast being fairly unknown as well as Niccol by average movie goer’s, most of the attention for the film is revolving around Hawke’s ability to portray the damaged war veteran who can no longer peruse his passion.

The initial premise of the story was undoubtedly engaging, its a very modern aspect of warfare and studying the effects it has on the morals of war and the effect on soldiers, if nothing else the film is daring in its attempt to tackle new complex issues of modern warfare. The setting of the film is very restricting from a directorial point of view as it is set mostly in one room and all the combat of the film is one a screen itself, and as far as drama building it was made clear that Niccol struggled. As a viewer it never really seemed like Niccol was able to convey the shock and thrill value of the warfare, unable to overcome the issue of the war being seen through a computer screen. The atmosphere created for the first turn of the film while Hawke is at the controls of the drone where too calm, maybe in an attempt to demonstrate the cold hearted nature of the warfare, but neither this effect nor any sense of thrilling danger was really conveyed in the film as far as the war scenes.

Niccol’s writing as well was disappointing as far as the characters who felt purpose built, unrealistic in the way they had been written to serve a certain purpose in the film. The characters this was most apparent in was Bruce Greenwood as the bases captain, his dialogue was stereotypical in the way he was overly sweary when addressing the troops and his manner of disapproval of the quality of the new recruits gave the role a cartoonihs feel. You were reminded of other better film roles of commandos by the performance, which isn’t the fault of Greenwood but rather the recycled dialogue he was forced to wrestle with. Other characters such as the two other members of Hawke’s unit who blindly went along with the commands of the CIA to the point where their attempts to justify their opinions were borderline laughable as they attempted to justify their views with cliché patriotic speeches. There were further aspects that seemed like slightly cliché, such as the fact that the CIA’s role of the ‘bad guy’ was featured by a deep scary voice that came through a phone in the bunker, not an actual character. Because of these aspects which were extremely unoriginal the environment on the army base at least didn’t feel real, nothing surprised you as the film went along at what felt like a slow pace due to the lack of thrills provided by Niccol’s.

The other half of the film rested on the shoulders of Hawke’s performance and the drama provided form his home life. Hawke’s performance may not have been appalling bad, but again it wasn’t good enough to tackle with the script that he had been given, which must have been limited as the character was basically a mute for a large percent of the film, which can prove to be an issue if your the main character. The fact that he was silent mostly and joined with the way that Hawke played him as a cold eyed slow docile man prove for a character which it was difficult to make an emotional connection to, due to a large amount of inactivity. Unfortunately this didn’t make for riveting viewing, and for a film which revolves around a central character this was the main breaking point. On top of this the depiction of his life at home felt rushed, lacking in required depth and investigation, presumable to allow the story to spend more time on base with Hawke flying the drone, but as stated little excitement was found their either. The home environment of the film needed more time and effort, for example the children are never really feature in the film, other than hugging their parents, in the entire film only one scene when Hawke has a scene with multiple lines with one of the children. The effect of this was leaving more of the film to rely on Hawke’s sole performance, which unfortunately wasn’t strong enough to redeem all these poor aspects of the film.

Good Kill unfortunately doesn’t function well as a thriller or as a drama, and for a war film with little action this leaves really little to look at apart from Hawke’s Mustang. The disappointing aspect is that the films premise is good and unexplored until this film, meaning it had the potential free range to introduce us to the knew struggles that the soldiers who fly the drones have to face, but little in the film will provoke an emotional response. The highlight of the film is finally when Hawke’s character rebels against the CIA voice and decided not to carry out the mission, but this stage of the film had been preceded by many of Hawke’s team carrying out complete outrageously unjust mission that it felt as if the rebellion should have taken place much earlier. Due to many of these problems the film is a bit of a disaster wasting the promise it had with a new war film premise.

Verdict : With a slow pace and being dry of both thrills and engaging drama it offers little entertainment outside the interest of discovering how the drone programme is run, and a couple of scenes where Hawke sticks it to the man in the most reserved way possible.

Verdict : 1/5

Quote :  “Don’t ask me if this is a just war. It’s just war.”