Innovative Good Kill director enters drone terrain

Zimmer (Jake Abel), Maj. Tom Egan (Ethan Hawke) and Lt. Col. Jack Johns (Bruce Greenwood) fly lethal drone missions from the safety of a trailer outside Las Vegas in Andrew Niccol’s Good Kill.
Zimmer (Jake Abel), Maj. Tom Egan (Ethan Hawke) and Lt. Col. Jack Johns (Bruce Greenwood) fly lethal drone missions from the safety of a trailer outside Las Vegas in Andrew Niccol’s Good Kill.

Writer-director Andrew Niccol's movies are full of far- out ideas, but they can make for uncomfortable viewing because they can also seem too prescient and real.

His Oscar-nominated script for Peter Weir's 1998 film The Truman Show featured Jim Carrey as a fellow who only gradually realizes he's an unwilling reality star. This was a few years before Survivor or Big Brother hit the airwaves.

His directorial debut Gattaca explored the unsettling consequences of genetically engineering human beings, and S1m0ne starred Al Pacino as a filmmaker who no longer has to deal with temperamental leading ladies because his new star is computer generated.

That said, Good Kill, which is available on demand through most cable and satellite providers, is his oddest and most realistic movie to date. It features Ethan Hawke as a burned out drone operator named Maj. Thomas Egan, who drops bombs in Yemen and Afghanistan during the day but commutes back to his home in Las Vegas every day as if he were an accountant instead of an airman. (See our review of Good Kill on the blood, dirt & angels blog.)

Locating the film in Sin City, with landmarks such as a faux Egyptian pyramid and a miniature Eiffel Tower, might be read as metaphor for the shrinking world -- the way technology distorts the distance between target and aggressor. Nonetheless, Niccol says, "A lot of people question me on why I put the base near Las Vegas.

"I didn't put the base near Las Vegas. The military did. And they did that for a very good reason: The terrain around Las Vegas is very similar to Afghanistan. So that's how they could train."

A Question of Honor

To make his film, Niccol consulted with former drone operators and learned some facts that haven't made it into the debate about the controversial weapons. For example, the remote control planes are run from unassuming trailers.

"The reason they're in that trailer is that they could be wheeled up in a Hercules cargo plane so they could be running anywhere in the world in 24 hours," Niccol says. "But then they realized they could do those things by satellite, so they didn't have to send them anywhere. They never updated the technology. They just used those containers."

Because drone operators face more danger in their commutes than on duty, Niccol says that even other troops are ambivalent about them.

"There's an example where they were about to issue a medal for drone operators, and there was such an outcry from other branches of the military that they had to rescind the medal, and they [were] never awarded. The rest of the services said the medals are for acts of valor or courage. There's absolutely no risks for these guys that's worth the medal."

"At the same time, it sent a message to the drone operators that what you're doing is making mortal decisions, but it's not worth recognizing," Niccol says. "How are you going on with your work when they say that?"

A Difficult Discussion

At the same time, drones protect ground troops from hostile forces, and people like Egan face moral quandaries their predecessors didn't. "When [Egan] was in his F16 and flying a combat mission, he would drop his ordnance and fly away," Niccol says. "We'd never ask a pilot to drop his ordnance and do what they call 'damage assessment,' which is counting the dead. You can see that in [high resolution]. We've never asked a soldier to do that."

"We've come up with a language for that. We have this term called 'proportionality,' which means I'm such a bad guy that we need to kill me so badly that anyone around me is fair game. We've never been in a position to do that before."

In the film, Egan, who is not a talkative guy, turns to alcohol because he's unable to articulate how he relates to his job.

"His character doesn't like what he's thinking, so he doesn't want to articulate what he's thinking. One of the things that was a challenge that I thought she pulled off pretty well was January Jones [as Egan's wife] who basically had to act up against a brick wall. Normally, Ethan Hawke is a naturally gregarious guy, and he's a very generous actor who will try to help whoever he's acting opposite. But his character wouldn't allow that to happen in this case," Niccol says.

"When I phoned Ethan for the role I said, 'Ethan, you have this great facility for language [he has received nominations and awards for screenwriting]. We're not going to need any of that.' It was kind of a challenge for him because it's almost a silent performance."

No Party Line

Niccol's fascination with drones is obvious, but he's neither a cheerleader nor a detractor.

"To be anti-drone would be anti-the Internet because it's not going anywhere," he says. "It's the new tool we're going to be using, and we have to work out if we're going to use it responsibly. Hopefully, we'll give people the vocabulary to have the debate."

Niccol also warns that precision bombing can still result in civilian casualties, and poor intelligence can make the attacks as counterproductive as they are lethal.

"There was that recent case where the hostages were killed because we didn't have the right intelligence. It was very precise. We hit the very compound we wanted to hit, but we very precisely killed the wrong people."

He adds, "It's kind of great because with this film, I've been accused of being anti-American. And in Europe, I was accused of being too pro-American, which is kind of funny."

Niccol's attitude may come from the fact that he was born in Paraparaumu, New Zealand, instead of, say, Conway.

"It does give me some perspective that I wouldn't have had if I'd been born in the belly of the beast. Do you know what I mean? I have an outsider's perspective. I may have more objectivity because I don't come to it with any patriotic verve," he says.

This may explain why Republican Sen. and presidential contender Rand Paul gave a whole speech framed around Gattaca and its cautionary approach to genetic engineering, but left wingers could use the film's tale of genetic manipulation as a metaphor for racism.

"In Gattaca, you can cure genetic diseases, but you can also want your son to be 6 foot 4 and have blue eyes. There are sort of two sides to it, and it's the same with the drone program."

Unlike his characters, Niccol isn't trying to escape or deny a technology that could lead to negative consequences. Throughout the interview, he seems more interested in having a debate than a sermon. That attitude even emerges when he's informed his call is being recorded.

"I assume that anymore. After The Truman Show, nothing surprises me."

MovieStyle on 05/29/2015

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