Review: "Good Kill"

Director: Andrew Niccol
Runtime: 102 minutes

In terms of subject matter, director Andrew Niccol (Gattaca) could not have chosen a more timely arena for his latest film: drone warfare. Unmanned craft (especially the weaponized form) are political and ethical lightning rods, and not without reason. If you've heard of them, you likely have some strong opinions about how they should and shouldn't be used. If only Niccol's film was as stirring as the debate it wades into. Good Kill, though a marked improvement over Niccol's recent films, is affecting for brief moments, but mostly succumbs to either listlessness or misjudged melodrama (or both).

At the heart of Good Kill's moral queasiness is Maj. Tommy Egan (Ethan Hawke), a former pilot who now spends his days cramped inside a metal box on a Las Vegas airbase. Inside said metal box is the high-tech ground control for drones operating thousands of miles away. Without ever risking a crash (or even being detected), Egan and his teammates are able to take out targets as they please with brutal efficiency. 

Yet the drones' all-seeing eyes can cause more stress than one might think. Early on, Egan and his commander (Bruce Greenwood), watch helplessly as a woman in Pakistan's Waziristan region is raped by a neighbor (a neighbor who may or may not be an insurgent). Since the drones' only weapons are missiles, there's nothing that can be done to stop the horrific act, even though Egan and co. are the only outsiders bearing witness to the woman's suffering. Scenes like this get Good Kill off to a solid start, promising something of a variation on The Hurt Locker in regards to depicting the thornier aspects of military life. The life of drone pilots is one of much greater contrast than that of a foot soldier. At the end of his shift, Tommy drives a few miles to a wife (January Jones) and two kids. He gets to fight the allegedly good fight with no more than some simple clicks in an air-conditioned room.

Though the personal advantages of this sort of work are obvious, Tommy begins to doubt the integrity of his orders once the CIA enters the fray. With Langley suddenly calling the shots via conference call, there's a new layer of disassociation added to Tommy's supposedly necessary strikes. Instead of conferring with other people face to face before lighting up a target, he now takes orders from the cryptic bureaucratic droning of a voice coming out of a headset. The CIA spokesman's voice, combined with Niccol's eerily tight shots of the phoneset's red speaker light, call to mind a white collar HAL9000. Sure, the drone is an impersonal weapon, but more than any other soldier committing morally questionable acts, it really was just following orders. 

The CIA's orders, which push Egan and his team beyond their comfort zones on a regular basis, are the beginning of Egan's unravelling. But rather than build momentum, Niccol's script starts to flail. One early confrontation between Hawke and Jones plays out with a level of intensity that makes one wonder if the scene was actually supposed to come near the end of the film. Later developments don't fare much better. Once Tommy finally opens up to his wife, he spills his guts so rapidly that you'll wonder if you zoned out and accidentally missed some transitional scenes. 

Niccol's visual style doesn't do much to amplify his interior story. Camera work and editing are solid during the drone sessions, but everything else is scattershot. Due to filters and/or color correction, Good Kill often looks unpleasantly oversaturated. And when the frame isn't filled with synthetic coloring, it's draped in some oppressive shadows. Nighttime scenes in Tommy's bedroom look like they belong in a bad noir, with only ugly bursts of orange light breaking up the darkness. And Tommy's aforementioned confessions to his wife play out in a bizarre, stilted pastoral shot that has Hawke and Jones stand side-by-side like they're delivering lines for an experimental piece of theater. 

Beyond its subject matter, Good Kill is also a waste of some perfectly talented actors. Mr. Hawke's performance stumbles here and there, but that mostly comes down to Niccol's writing and direction. For the most part, Hawke does a good job with the wounded stoic routine, making Egan's journey coherent and convincing, even when the film lurches from one IMPORTANT development to the next. Although even Hawke is left powerless by the tastelessness of the final scene, which wants to give Good Kill's protagonist a heroic moment while completely ignoring the ramifications of his actions so many miles away. Meanwhile Jones, though seriously miscast opposite someone of Hawke's age (is it that hard to find someone age appropriate?), is actually quite good with her role as the put-upon wife trying to hold onto her marriage. Egan's military peers, top-lined by Greenwood and Zoe Kravitz, do nice work as well, especially the latter. One can only imagine what they all might have accomplished had they been in the hands of a script that dared to be more than thinly-sketched portrait of one of modern warfare's most polarizing advancements. 

Grade: C

Review: "X-Men: First Class"

Forget what they've been telling you. Turns out it's not the third time that's the charm, but the fifth. At least, that appears to be the current trend in past-their-welcome Hollywood franchises. It's already happened once this year with Fast Five (the series' only film to earn mostly positive reviews), and now it's happening again with X-Men: First Class, a prequel/origin-story/reboot of the mutant superhero franchise.

After two generally liked films, the X-Men franchise quickly took a nose dive with X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009). And even though there still appear to be plans for a (hopefully much better) Wolverine sequel, FOX apparently felt that it couldn't hurt to cash in on the prequel/origin trend a little further, taking us all the way back to the 40s and 60s. After an opening eerily reminiscent of 2000's X-Men, involving a young Erik/Magneto (Michael Fassbender) in a German concentration camp, we begin a fairly lengthy bit of globe trotting. In one story thread, we see Magneto become something of a Nazi hunter, while in a second, we see a young Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) recruited by a CIA agent (Rose Byrne) to examine the sinister Hellfire Club. Originally thought to be a Communist infiltration of America, it's actually run by Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), a mutant himself, who is determined to use the Cold War to bring about the annihilation of non-mutants.

And despite a certain lack of surprises (we already know which major characters must live), Matthew Vaughn does manage to inject some style, and in turn new life, into the franchise. The 60s interior designs are richly filled out, in settings ranging from Charles' mansion, to Shaw's nuclear submarine. There's also some surprisingly good cast work. McAvoy and Fassbender are standouts among the ensemble, as two men with gradually differing opinions on what it means to be a mutant living among humans. Fassbender ultimately wins out, if only because the script eventually surrenders McAvoy's role and makes him little more than an emotional support for Fassbender's. Yet the two do have a great chemistry, and it's a shame that the film doesn't give us more of their relationship in its attempt to cover so many characters and set-up points. The way the film deals with Magneto's struggle to harness his powers produces some truly effective moments, but it's hard not to feel that there could have been a much grander, more emotional pay-off if said struggle wasn't stuck on the the end of a training montage.

And it's that montage, which comes right before the film's Cuban-set finale, where we can see some of the film's problems start to surface. First Class has a great initial stretch, up until Magneto and Charles finally meet, and a thrillingly put together final half hour. These bookends to the story effectively jump across locations and characters, establishing conflicts and executing fight scenes with a nice sense of clarity. Everything in-between, however, is not quite so consistent. Despite a golden 5 (10?) second cameo, the round-up and training of the young mutants is where everything gets a bit choppy. Not surprisingly, character struggles aren't exactly the most three dimensional. They exist for a little, and then YAY they're solved. Only those issues connecting Charles, Magneto, and Mystique have any real staying power, and despite some nifty powers among the ensemble, I wish they had taken more time to focus on this trio. For every good character interaction, there's something a little cheesy or clichéd. These usually aren't big issues, but they put some dents in the film's armor.

And as good as some smaller cast members are (Nicolas Hoult as Hank McCoy/Beast), others are, well, not. Case in point: January Jones as Emma Frost. As beautiful as she looks, the actress seems totally out of her league here, once again enforcing the notion that her work as Betty Draper on Mad Men is the only good performance she'll ever give. Less of a distraction, though perhaps a tad puzzling, is Rose Byrne as Moira McTaggart. In Byrne's case, the fault may lie more with the writing. Either way, though, for someone who is supposed to be tough and supportive of the X-Men, she has one too many scenes where her character is simply wide-eyed and astounded. It makes her look weak, and even stupid, despite her status as a CIA Agent. That said, at least she gets some chances to act, whereas many in the ensemble are just there. Azazel (Jason Flemying), a red-skinned mutant with a tail and the ability to teleport is more of a cool effect than a character. He still fares better than another henchman of Shaw's, who can create tornadoes, yet never gets a single line.

For all of its little faults, however, Vaughn and co. do deserve credit for restoring quality to a franchise that had taken a serious tumble. In putting more emphasis on exploring (some of) the characters, he's able to inject some scenes with a sense of purpose. When Magneto lifts a submarine clear out of the water, it's more than just a special effect. It's a moment of triumph for the character, one that is built upon his ability to master the trauma of his past. Scenes like this show First Class at its best, and what the series is capable of when some real effort and talent is behind the material. So while this latest installment may be far from perfect, and certainly not the best super hero film, it's a solid (re) kickstart to the franchise, even if it doesn't quite reach its full potential.

Grade: B-