Good Kill

January Jones is lovely. Scratch that, she's an utter MILF, but Ethan Hawke kind of ruins this movie. His face is just so annoying. In a serious scene, I just get the impression that he is about to laugh, or he smirks and just ruins it all. I don't think he can pull off this performance (and c'mon it's not that difficult). I enjoyed the bombing scenes very much, but they are rather distant and unconnected. The final kill feels out of place, too. It's shot well, but the film could have been so much more, as after 20 minutes you've already contemplated the rights and wrongs of it, and we're not fed much more from then until the end.

C+

It sounds Iike they took the soundtrack from mid 90s generic WWF intro music for C level talent.

I broadly respect this film's uneasy conscience, and its claustrophobic and sterile visual style is striking, but it simply cannot turn an anti-drone-warfare polemic into engaging cinema. Its attempts are either tedious (a non-starting subplot involving January Jones as an discontented housewife) or didactic to the point of distraction, with characters conversing in thinly disguised lecture notes and slogans. The Ethan Hawke protagonist is so morose and somnambulant...which is the point, of course, but it is very hard to invest in him and whether he can reconcile duty with morality, etc., etc. or put down the vodka (clichéd shorthand for "haunted"). His central complaint—he wishes he could explode people and places in a real plane versus from a computer console outside Las Vegas—is also hard to relate to. The film does buid to a satisfying and dramatic ending, albeit one which also registers as far-fetched*.

C+

*The film should have ended with the knock on the trailer's door. Him being able to just waltz away and drive to Reno (way to give the concerned wife a bit of time and breathing room ) feels goofy. Wouldn't there be...punishment for an unauthorized strike?

Had to check the dictionary for that one. Good review, though.

There would be punishment... And the character foresees that and leaves without a care, that's what I think it implies. The ending feels light and anti-climactic but that's a good touch. Hawke's character is concerned about bringing vigilante justice to the rapist and woman killer but is able to see past the problematic signature targeting, indiscriminate strikes, and "double-tapping" ordered by the Agency. His unauthorized strike against the rapist-killer is a feel-good moment, a self-redemption for him. And to leave the base to find his wife is another feel-good moment. But that is ironic because the bigger problem has not been solved and he is not trying to address it.