R | 1h 42m | Drama, Thriller, War | 2015
Easily one of the most underrated and least appreciated filmmakers of the 21st century, Andrew Niccol has made eight features, and none of them could be considered financially successful. He broaches subjects that aren’t quite taboo, and he never tells the audience what to think. He’s a provocateur and a rebel. In this day of overguarded, microsensitive industry oversight, that’s saying quite a bit.
“Good Kill,” like most of Mr. Niccol’s films, was way ahead of trending societal and political curves. As with “American Sniper,” released the previous year, it is neither pro- nor anti-war. This presents a complex, divisive conundrum for the audience. It’s also the first live-action U.S. movie broaching war strategies originating with the Obama administration.
For his third collaboration with Mr. Niccol, Ethan Hawke (“Gattica,” “Lord of War”) stars as Maj. Thomas Egan, a pilot and veteran of multiple tours of duty in the Middle East. For reasons never fully (a wise choice) explained, he is now stationed in Las Vegas, where he lives off base with his family.
Soldiers With Banker’s Hours
For any active-duty soldier, this would be a dream gig. Egan puts in little more than banker’s hours, goes home every night to the warm embrace of his gorgeous wife, Molly (January Jones, turning in a modern-day version of her 1960s “Mad Men” character), and two beautiful but not quite well-adjusted children.In addition to short hours and sleeping in his own bed, Egan is still doing what he did in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is, he does this while at a desk in front of multiple TV screens, computers, switches, and a high-end joystick. Along with four others, Egan uses satellites to locate high-level enemy combatants. With clinical precision, via drones, he blows them into itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny pieces.
Button-Pusher
Why wouldn’t any soldier envy this kind of assignment? In Egan’s mind, he’s no longer a soldier but rather a glorified button-pusher. He thinks a monkey could do his job, and he might just be right. It’s clear from the start that Egan wants to go back to the Middle East. He presses Johns for a transfer, which is met with multiple stalls and obligatory patronizing. Johns says he will try (he actually won’t), and tells Egan he doubts anything will change.
Egan’s frustration manifests itself with increased drinking, the shirking of his duties as a husband and father, and an almost deliberate effort to be less productive at work. For two of Egan’s younger male troop members, none of his behavior makes sense, but it’s with the arrival of a new female (Zoe Kravitz as Airman Vera Suarez) that Egan finds a quasi-kindred spirit. This is also when the kill orders stop coming from the military brass. Instead, they come directly from the CIA, represented by a disembodied voice delivered with icy, emotional detachment by the note-perfect Peter Coyote as “Langley.”
Multiple Quagmires
It was also more than likely that Mr. Niccol wanted to create moral and ethical quagmires for the characters (and by proxy, the audience), and he more than succeeded. You don’t train men and women to adhere to a strict code when taking out the enemy and then change the rules in mid-engagement, and certainly not with such gray, nebulously blurred directives.The movie clearly explains why police and the military might have situations to use the term “good kill.” For some, it might mean something akin to a moral car wash; it could also be a blessing from those higher up on the food chain designed to assuage any perceived guilt or legal liability. It’s a phrase brought up only under the direst of circumstances and makes the jobs of those whom we ask to protect us all the more needlessly difficult. These brave men and women should never have their motives or actions questioned or challenged. They simply follow orders.
If anyone deserves such scathing scrutiny, it should be those on high. They want no blood on their own hands yet have no problem with it seeping through the pores and souls of those beneath them.
