In the new film “ Good Kill,” Ethan Hawke plays Tom Egan, a former Air Force pilot who’s now a drone operator in Las Vegas. Egan longs to go back into combat, but instead is relegated to firing at suspected terrorist targets from thousands of miles away.
Writer-director Andrew Niccol told Here & Now’s Meghna Chakrabarti that he was drawn to make the film because he found drone operators to be an entirely new kind of solider.
“These guys have a very schizophrenic life: they fight the Taliban by remote control for 12 hours a day, and then go home to their wife and kids,” Nicchol said. “I always thought, ‘what does that do to the psyche of a soldier and what toll does that take?'”
More Stills From The Film
Guest
- Andrew Niccol, writer, director and producer of “Good Kill.”
Related
- The Summer Of Ethan Hawke
- Giving Up The Concert Stage To Teach
- What’s Your Major? Drones.
- Pakistani Drone Victims Speak On Capitol Hill
- Drone Strike Deaths Raise Questions
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![Zoe Kravitz (Vera Suarez) and Ethan Hawke (Tom Egan) in Andrew Niccol’s "Good Kill." (Courtesy of Lorey Sebastian. Copyright © 2014 Clear Skies Nevada LLC. An IFC Films release.)](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/bd9c90e/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1280x853+0+0/resize/880x586!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.wbur.org%2Fwordpress%2F11%2Ffiles%2F2015%2F05%2F0514_good-kill3.jpg)
![Ethan Hawke (Tom Egan) and January Jones (Molly Egan) in Andrew Niccol’s "Good Kill." (Courtesy of Lorey Sebastian. Copyright © 2014 Clear Skies Nevada LLC. An IFC Films release.)](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/ab284b1/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1280x853+0+0/resize/880x586!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.wbur.org%2Fwordpress%2F11%2Ffiles%2F2015%2F05%2F0514_good-kill4.jpg)
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![Ethan Hawke (Tom Egan) and Bruce Greenwood (Jack Johns) in Andrew Niccol’s "Good Kill." (Courtesy of Lorey Sebastian. Copyright © 2014 Clear Skies Nevada LLC. An IFC Films release.)](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/22e4ef5/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1280x853+0+0/resize/880x586!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.wbur.org%2Fwordpress%2F11%2Ffiles%2F2015%2F05%2F0514_good-kill2.jpg)