NOT YOU SEE THEM, NOW YOU DON’T: Movie Review of Eye in the Sky by Howard Casner

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Warning: SPOILERS

rev 1 When air warfare and the ability to drop bombs on the enemy became standard methods of battle, pilots often had a different feeling, even a disconnect, from the grunts on the ground.  It was easier to kill the enemy combatants because the pilot didn’t engage with their foe face to face.  However, that’s not where the disconnect stopped.  It was also much easier to kill those who were not combatants, but who are, as we say today, collateral damage.

However, a new method of air warfare has somehow combined both the disconnected pilots in the air as well as the more engaged privates on parade.  This new method of mass killing, drones, enable a pilot to drop bombs on the enemy from a safe distance; but because the drones come with cameras, one also tends to see everything almost first hand, as if the ones with their hands on the trigger are there, even seeing some of the victims close up before launching a missile.

That is one of the dilemmas that is at the heart of the new drama Eye in the Sky, a story about a group of people trying  decide whether to lodge a missile at a house that not only contains terrorists high up on the most wanted list, but terrorists who are planning two suicide bombings.  The problem: right outside the house is a little girl, blithely unaware, selling bread.  So is the attack worth the death of the little girl? Read the rest of this entry »


PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE INTENSE: Movie reviews of Good Kill and Tomorrowland by Howard Casner

First, a word from our sponsors. Ever wonder what a reader for a contest or agency thinks when he reads your screenplay? Check out my new e-book published on Amazon: Rantings and Ravings of a Screenplay Reader, including my series of essays, What I Learned Reading for Contests This Year, and my film reviews of 2013. Only $2.99. http://ow.ly/xN31r

 

and check out my Script Consultation Services: http://ow.ly/HPxKE

 

Warning: SPOILERS

good killI have recently seen a movie that, for my money, is more intense, suspenseful and edge of your seat than Mad Max: Fury Road, Furious 7, The Avengers: Age of Ultron and Tomorrowland put together.

But it’s also a much smaller film than any of those; smaller in budget, in size, in CGI.

It’s more than all of those adverbs, I suspect, because it is about a real person put into a real situation, a situation of profound psychological and moral conflict. In the above movies, all the characters had to worry about was the end of their existence.

In the movie I am referring to, Good Kill, our central character has something far greater at stake: the end of his soul.

The basic story line revolves around one Major Thomas Egan, just about the best drone pilot there is. And his job, day in, day out, is to locate the bad guys in the Middle East and blow them up from thousands of miles away. His bliss is basically the same as Chris Kyle in American Sniper, but he gets to do it from the comfort of a chair in an air conditioned unit on a base in Nevada, not far from the R&R resort of Las Vegas. Read the rest of this entry »