Andrew Niccol – writer of The Truman Show, and thoughtful, theme-driven director of his own films such as Gattaca and Lord of War – turns to the modern, soulless face of warfare, as currently waged by the US. Ethan Hawke plays a USAF pilot now relegated to a desk job of sorts – he’s a drone operator, eliminating targets in Afghanistan from inside a sealed container on a Las Vegas military base. Unsurprisingly, he’s having qualms and hitting the bottle, while his marriage unravels. Illustrating the increasing CGI-fication of warfare, Good Kill uses its deliberately restricted chamber-drama parameters to question the ethics of a war that places its executioners in a detached, untouchable godlike position. But Niccol also relies excessively on expositional, discursive speechifying by Bruce Greenwood as the drone unit’s commanding officer. It’s nice to see the always compelling Hawke – here, tenser and more laconic than ever – in a role where his face’s deep stress lines come into their own. But, spare as it is, Good Kill might have benefited from an even starker approach, one that really let us think out the issues for ourselves.

At one point, a character in Good Kill calls out “Splash!” when a target is hit – I might have thought this was Niccol overplaying his hand if it hadn’t been reported as actually happening in the very illuminating documentary Drone. Tonje Hessen Schei’s film maps out the ramifications of the rise of drone warfare, as well as showing the work of anti-drone campaigners, such as former operator Brandon Bryant, seen addressing the UN about his old trade. Not least among the film’s horrors is its discussion of how the computer games industry promotes the militarisation of society and ensures a steady supply of young gamers to be recruited as long-distance executioners. The term used by one commentator is “militainment”, which is about as ugly – and as chilling – a neologism as you’re ever likely to hear.

Good Kill ***
Drone ***