Good Kill (IFC Films, 4.10.15) “is about drone warfare and this righteous drama’s take on it. The military jargon is bogus and insulting. There is, of course, no such thing as a ‘good kill’, and Andrew Niccol’s drama will remind you of that repeatedly. Good Kill runs through the rituals of military slaughter. It dehumanizes the combatant and underlines the inhuman nature of collateral damage and strikes based on pattern behavior. It’s often slow and occasionally simplistic, but at least someone’s talking about the issue.” — Excerpted from Henry Barnes‘ Guardian review, filed on 9.12.14 from the Toronto Film festival.

“Ethan Hawke plays Major Tom Egan, a former fighter pilot and an outdated piece of tech. The Air Force doesn’t need top guns, it needs drone ops, so Egan is ousted from his cockpit, retasked as the leader of a team trained to kill the enemy from 7,000 miles away. They sit in a shipping container, miles outside Las Vegas. They line up the target, run through the protocols and pull a joystick trigger. Splash. Good kill. They count the bodies as the smoke clears in Pakistan or Yemen or Somalia or Afghanistan. Then Tom takes his Pontiac back to the suburbs for barbecue and beer.”

Costarring January Jones, Zoë Kravitz, Jake Abel and Bruce Greenwood.