Quendrith Johnson

by Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent

On May 15, IFC Films will release GOOD KILL starring Ethan Hawke, Bruce Greenwood, January Jones, Zoë Kravitz, and Jake Abel. It’s an unusual war-related drama in that it uncovers the world of armchair drone pilots and how they go about the business of warfare from 7000 miles away. Set in 2010, the year President Obama made headlines for biggest number of drone strikes in US Military History, Ethan Hawke plays an F-16 fighter who is reassigned to the joystick. And he is not happy about it. Ironically, as of 2015, the US Military has changed their policy on recruitment for this kind of warfare and now, according to sources, recruits gamers for the task. Civilian gamers, not necessarily full-fledged service members.

Armed with this knowledge, the general public is in for quite the education about the psychological perils of current tactics using remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs). While they are referred to as unmanned aerial vehicles (UVAs) in GOOD KILL, the covert use of these sky Predator drones by the CIA is public record. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism keeps tabs on “Covert Drone Wars” including stats annually plus lifetime strikes from the programs inception around the First Gulf War. GOOD KILL basically sheds light on the personal side of remote kills, including collateral damage, and poses many questions, not the least of which turns out to be ‘Is there honor in shooting down combatants as a faceless weapon?’

Bruce Greenwood made time between his latest projects to discuss the film, even though he is tasked out on many different shoots at the moment. When the picture screened early at Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), Bruce reveals “I was in a cave in Hungary. Literally.” That was for sci-fi project SPECTRAL coming from Legendary/Universal, with James Badge Dale (SHAME, DEPARTED) and Emily Mortimer (HUGO, OUR IDIOT BROTHER).

And that segues into the storied career of Greenwood, who many will know as Christopher Pike from STAR TREK INTO THE DARKNESS (2013), directed by J.J. Abrams, or as JFK in Oliver Stone’s THIRTEEN DAYS (2000). The Quebec native, who bounced to New Jersey before landing in Vancouver at age 11, has also been in I ROBOT (2004),  DEJA VU (2006) and FLIGHT (2012), both with Denzel Washington, and even had a bit part in Sylvester Stallone’s 1982 classic First Blood. As a side note, co-star Ethan Hawke got tapped for his first Oscar nom with Denzel for TRAINING DAY (2001). 

The main thing you need to know about Bruce Greenwood is that he might have started as Dr. Seth Griffin on TV hit comedy “St. Elsewhere,” but he has traveled miles since then. And Greenwood does not suffer fools, woe to the unprepared journalist. (Full disclosure, once saw the result of an unprepared broadcast journalist asking him questions at an award show.)

You get a sense from his choices, such as working five times with acclaimed director Atom Egoyan, most recently on QUEEN OF THE NIGHT about painter Margaret Keane, that Greenwood’s sensibility as a creative artist is complex and daring. Egoyan, who is Armenian, was born in Egypt but hails from Canada (Western) as well. The films they did together are the director’s seminal piece about Armenia genocide, ARARAT from 2002, also, order by most recent: DEVIL’S KNOT (2013) with Reese Witherspoon, and opposite Sarah Polley in THE SWEET HEREAFTER (1997), as well as EXOTICA (1994), co-starring another great Canadian actor Elias Koteas.

But today we’re talking GOOD KILL, produced by Voltage Pictures which brought THE HURT LOCKER out in 2010. The director is the multifaceted writer/director Andrew Niccol (GATTACA, LORD OF WAR). In GOOD KILL, Greenwood plays Ethan Hawke’s commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jack Johns, who also has watch over Zoë’s character Suarez and Jake Abel’s team of less ethically concerned macho joystick jockeys. “Mad Men” alum January Jones is the super hot Vegas wife, Molly Egan, who is not liking the whining by her once airborne husband Hawke. And that’s where the spoiler alerts end. 

Here’s what Bruce had to say about Modern Warfare, ethical questions of war, how you work in a hangar as an actor when you body need to emote, as well as which critic is full of it…

Q: Did you already have a working understanding of drones before this film?

I was blissfully ignorant! It wasn’t until I realized how pervasive it was, and how it is prosecuted, that it really knocked me for a loop. The idea that from 7000 miles away, 10,000 feet in the air, a camera can read a license plate (or drop a bomb) is astonishing. And the drone footage in the film is supposed to be from 2010, so it is grainy, but now it (the resolution) is incredibly clear.

Q: Who was on the project first?

Andrew (Niccol) and Ethan (Hawke) were set, maybe Zoë (Kravitz) was set, I can’t recall. But Andrew called me up and sent me the script. We had a couple of Skype meetings. He was already doing location shooting down there (in Albuquerque, New Mexico). We saw the character the same way.

Q: I read somewhere, although I never look at other critics' work usually, where it said something like ‘Bruce Greenwood, always in a uniform’ —

It’s funny I saw something like that. Where it described me as “an actor who is rarely out of uniform.” I thought it was absolute horse shit. Almost a little insulting. Misses the point entirely.

Q: And of course I had to bring it up (laughs).  I think the point they were trying to make is that you often play an authority figure. In this case you play Ethan’s boss, who is kind of ambivalent.

You can be ambivalent, but when push comes to shove, you have to make a decision one way or the other. I think he is ambivalent to the very end. Until the end when he makes that speech, ‘I believe this is what we have to do.’ He is sort of defaulting. 

Q: You had the greatest lines in the whole movie. That one about ‘don’t ask if it’s a just war. To us, it’s just war.’

I got most of the dialogue. This guy never stops talking (laughs).

Q: Did Andrew Niccol set you guys up with drone pilots for training, like from Creech Air Base, drone central? Because he researched and got into the whole topic extensively.

Andrew had a military expert. But I didn’t do any ‘training,’ per se.

Q: Did you already know Ethan?

We never met, until we got on set. We got along really well right away. About half way through the shoot, he came back from a festival - and he said, ‘I just saw this great film!’ I said ‘what’s it called?’ He said ‘BOYHOOD.’ All of a sudden, cut to four or five months later, this thing is huge, all over.

Q: That’s funny. Meanwhile you guys are stuck in a box, it looks like a storage container, for a lot of this movie.

It made it difficult to keep it visually interesting. Andrew met that challenge really well. It was tricky for us to make it physical active. You can’t swing a cat in there.  You want to support your choices with movement. So the tension had to be created internally. It was one of those things were you walk onto the set, or the stage, and wedge yourself into the cubicle and work for 12 to 15 hours. You walk out and it’s Albuquerque (dressed to look like Vegas), not dissimilar to what those pilots are experiencing. It’s high-pressure, and everyone is working hard, demands are hard. That’s not the real world, it’s hot and we can go for dinner. These drone pilots are drilling down, and walk out into an entirely different world. Ethan’s character says ‘we are not in harms way.' It is absent honor. 

Q: Did you know Ethan has a brother who is a Green Beret? Can you imagine? A Colonel, I think.

I would have loved to have seen a conversation between them.

Q: Did you see dailies or any kind of footage to make changes to your performance if needed?

When we were shooting it, maybe a little something. I’ve seen it twice now. I’ve watched it very carefully for what I did that was right, and what was wrong. I’m not much of an audience for movies that I am in, until a few years have passed. It is hard to watch, if it’s only a year later; you remember what you were trying for. You’re thinking it was about this and now it is something else. 

Q: Okay, you know there will be follow up to that. Where there any of those moments in GOOD KILL, when you were trying for one (nuance) but something else resulted?

It is replete with those kind of moments. I think it all works really well.

Q: Let me switch that around then, which moment gripped you the most?

First where we hear from Langley (CIA Headquarters), and they want a quote-unquote double tap, a clean-up which is so profoundly impersonal and on a certain level reprehensible. Completely absent any kind of morality in the moment, constant stress, emotionally on the (team) to pull the trigger. Then Proportionality comes in, that was one of the moments.

Q: ‘Proportionality,’ that’s such a euphemism for 'kill anyone near a combatant,' right? The CIA Honcho’s voice on the phone I recognized without even looking at the credits, because it was like ‘Hey, that’s Peter Coyote!’

The voice we listened to was something else. Peter did it after the fact. He did a brilliant job.

Q: Did you hear any feedback from TIFF, when it was shown at the festival?

I was in Hungary in a cave, literally in the mountains outside of Budapest. That was for SPECTRAL with James Badge Dale, Emily Mortimer.

Q: In a cave? Perfect. What do you think of drone warfare after all that you learned about it on GOOD KILL?

It was an eye-opener, and at the same time a privilege to be working on something that asks people to think. And begs having a conversation about how we prosecute the war. And the morality of it —  ’Is there honor in conflict or not?’ And where is it to be found, if it is to be found. Is there nobility to be vanquishing someone who you are convinced is vanquishing you — from far way, is there honor in that — is it murder, is it not?

Let me amend that ‘is it murder, is it not’ - is Proportionality murder? It is easier for people to begin the conversation with that. ‘Is war murder’ is kind of a non-question.

GOOD KILL stars Ethan Hawke, Bruce Greenwood, Zoë Kravitz, January Jones and Jake Abel, and opens May 15 from IFC Films and produced by Voltage Pictures.

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