For a majority of classic war movies, the battles are fought by the infantry, slogging through the unimaginable horrors of ground assaults, and from airborne military personnel tasked with serving their country from the sky. As times change and technology continues to advance though, so does tactical warfare, which is now supplemented with the use of drones. In Andrew Niccol’s Good Kill, the emotional conflict that those drone operators are burdened by is explored via Ethan Hawke’s Air Force major, Tom Egan.
Egan’s traumatic daily regimen of blowing up locations thousands of miles away is logged in the film’s latest trailer. Like previous versions of the preview, the emphasis here is on the struggle between maintaining an unemotional response to duty while checking that your moral compass is on point.
Off the back of Boyhood, Hawke’s dalliance with weightier material appears to be offering something new to the action milieu. Thus far, it has snared a mixed bag of reviews, which US audiences will now be able to evaluate for themselves as a North American release is now on the calendar. Check out the new trailer above and be sure to throw in your thoughts in the comments below.
Good Kill opens in UK cinemas on April 10 and US cinemas on May 15.
The film tells the story of a Las Vegas fighter-pilot turned drone-pilot (Ethan Hawke), who fights the Taliban via remote control for half of his day, then goes home to his wife (January Jones) and kids in the suburbs for the other half. But the pilot is starting to question the mission. Is he creating more terrorists than he’s killing? Is he fighting a war without end? One soldier’s tale with epic implications.
GOOD KILL is a visually stunning exploration of how a man’s psychological, emotional and moral boundaries are challenged by the realities of 21st century warfare. The film initiates an important dialogue about the current techniques used in modern war, and in the same vein as THE HURT LOCKER and FULL METAL JACKET, illustrates how war is constantly being redefined according to the technologies and methods in play.
