'Good Kill' Takes A Searching Look At Drone Warfare

05:55

May 14, 2015

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.)

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?'"