After doing some of the best work of their careers in Gattaca, Andrew Niccol and Ethan Hawke reteamed again for Lord of War and now they are taking a different look at the military system with Good Kill. Premiering back on the fall festival circuit, the drama follows Hawke as a former fighter pilot who now does drone attacks from his comfortable home base of Las Vegas, complete with a wife and kids. When he starts questioning his mission, internal conflict begins to bubble.
We weren’t big fans of it at Venice, saying in our review, “It’s difficult to find an original angle when the issue you’re exploring is drone warfare, which hits closer to home in terms of time and space — or, as Bruce Greenwood‘s chatty Lt. Colonel likes to put it, “the here and fucking now” — as well as cultural and media exposure. Niccol’s aim is single-minded and relentless: to pound away at the sense of alienation and disconnect that drone pilots experience by killing people from the (relative) comfort of an air base in Nevada.”
Also starring Jake Abel, January Jones, and Zoe Kravitz, the first trailer has now arrived and can be seen below, along with the teaser poster:
Update: Check out the U.K. and U.S. trailer below.
A fighter-pilot turned drone-pilot, based in Las Vegas, fights the Taliban by remote control for twelve hours a day, then goes home to the suburbs and feuds with his wife and kids for the other twelve. 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 will be released on May 15th.