With this piercing study of a US drone pilot, writer-director Andrew Niccol updates the premise of his script for 1998’s The Truman Show: Big Brother is now not only watching, but able to obliterate us with a single button-push. The irony is that Ethan Hawke’s Tom Egan, patrolling Afghanistan from a Portakabin in the Nevada desert, suffers a growing impotence: in tense, crafted suspense sequences, we see him watching, helpless, while children stray into target range and a rapist runs amok. As the CIA ups its drone use, Niccol pulls sharp focus on the psychological aftershocks, while sparky workplace back-and-forths keep the editorial both lively and fully dramatised. Egan – like Truman – finally obtains his freedom in a set piece with the inbuilt thrill of witnessing someone defy the highest of authorities. And yet this smart and serious thinkpiece never loses sight of the overheads: the steep personal price paid by Egan, and the collateral damage incurred.
