Fourth Annual Symposium on Pop Culture and International Law: Representation of Ethical and Moral Dilemmas of Drone Warfare on Screen – An Analysis of ‘Good Kill’ and ‘Eye in The Sky’

[Michael Randall is a Senior Teaching Fellow at the University of Strathclyde, Glasow, teaching two modules at undergraduate level which concern the representation of law in media]

Cinema has a long history of depicting war on screen. As Knecht observes, war films are nearly as old as the business of cinema, identifying, for example, that even the highly controversial Birth of a Nation (1915) as a landmark film is a Civil War epic. In more recent times, Alex Garland’s Civil War (2024) is a dystopian version of a Civil War in the United States. 

There are several potential reasons for the prominence of war films. These include technical reasons (i.e. a cinema screen can depict an epic scale in a way that other forms of media cannot). However, of potentially greater resonance are factors including representations of heroism and patriotism, emotional resonance of victory or loss, and the preservation of stories as first-hand accounts diminish. Even if the events of the film are largely fictionalised, they can still allow audiences to engage with the merits and follies of a war.

The more well-known films in the genre often will place the viewer squarely in the conflict. The iconic opening of Saving Private Ryan places audiences in the middle of the allied assault on Omaha Beach in 1944. These films also show the futility of war, for example the 1930 and 2022 adaptations of All Quiet on the Western Front. They can also highlight the forgotten cost of a conflict, for example Indigènes (released in English as ‘Days of Glory’), depicts the contribution of North African soldiers in supporting French Forces during the 2^nd World War.

However, over time as technology advances, the methods by which war and conflict now occur has shifted. In particular, post-9/11 and the subsequent ‘war on terror’, there may not necessarily be a ground occupation with the increased use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or ‘drones’, being used to conduct operations. The war film genre also therefore needs to adapt, with two films standing out – Alex Niccol’s Good Kill (2014) and Gavin Hood’s Eye in the Sky (2015).

These films are distinctive in presenting a different type of warfare and have the characters playing the same role as the audience – they are watching events unfold on screen. In this regard, they are more immersive as a viewing experience and present a new form of law, ethics and proportionality to viewers. These films do reinforce existing narratives in international law, however they place the viewer in the position of decision makers. The films complement each other well but adopt different approaches when presenting a similar ethical conundrum of the collateral cost of action.

Introducing Good Kill and Eye In The Sky

Eye In The Sky assesses one US and UK counter-terror operation in Nairobi and presents the classic doctrine of double effect, or the ‘trolley problem’, to the viewer. The operation starts as a mission to capture high-ranking members of the Al-Shabaab group. Through remote surveillance and on the ground intelligence, it is discovered that the targets are planning an imminent suicide bombing mission. As the pressure increases on whether to launch a missile strike, a young girl enters the kill zone selling bread. The drama arises from the differing arguments made by military commanders, lawyers and politicians observing the operation and the arguments on whether to switch to a kill operation.

In contrast, Good Kill does not focus solely on one operation. Rather, its protagonist, played by Ethan Hawke, has been completing drone missions, but wants to return to in-person flight assignments. The targets are initially in Afghanistan and increase in frequency. However, he is assigned to increasingly challenging missions under the direction of the CIA in which he is tasked with attacking targets in Yemen and Somalia. Furthermore, the rules of engagement and identification of targets shifts from a more certain ‘personality strike’ to a less certain ‘signature strike’ based not on suspicion of guilt, but a pattern of behaviour. This leads Hawke and some of the others in the team to question the validity of the orders and a negative impact on his home life.

Key Events In the Films

Both films feature key scenes which immerse the audience in the decision-making process of military action, considering the role of ethics and the wider cost to the civilian population of subsequent damage.

One of the most significant events in Eye in the Sky sees Helen Mirren’s character seeking British Army legal counsel to obtain legal authority to strike. She is told to ‘refer up’ to the Attorney General. The AG advises that legally they can strike, but others in the room debate the political cost and defer the decision, with further calls made to the UK Foreign Secretary and the US Secretary of State. During the delay, the young girl enters the area, with the drone pilot requesting a re-assessment of the collateral damage in defiance of the likely killing of the young girl. The original counsel again advises to ‘refer up’ and says, ‘I’m here to advise you on the law. The law is not here to get in your way, it is here to protect you and to protect your target’. The audience is confronted with complex questions of necessity and proportionality. Characters make valid arguments which adopt wildly different views and weigh up a range of factors, taking their toll on those involved in the mission. Law is effectively a character and viewers share the same experience as the generals and politicians, viewing law either as an antagonistic obstacle, or as a protective shield. 

While arguably not as intense as Eye in the Sky, Good Kill features useful context about the use of drones in conflict as the characters express their concerns over a prolonged period, presenting the audience with a form of ‘drone trauma’ through repeated actions.

In an early scene new recruits are being briefed about the changes in conflict. Drawing comparisons to video games, the Lt. Colonel explains that they are killing real people, not pixels. The apparent distance and separation between the person pulling the trigger on a strike and the target of the strike is an important part of the film. A presentation of new forms of ‘heroic values’ is contrasted with the main character wanting to return to manned flights because he views them as more heroic. The scene is a good reminder for audiences about the consequences of this form of combat compared to traditional forms of direct combat.

In a later scene, while under the new rules of engagement, the drone pilots are instructed to strike a leader of Al-Qaeda. They are then instructed to send a second strike as rescuers come to the scene with the assessment that other high-value targets are part of the rescue team, with a second strike being a proportionate pre-emptive defence. The scene ends with one of the team openly questioning whether the strike was a war crime, with the audience again presented with the question of whether the second strike was necessary.

Law and Justice, But Existing Tropes

What is presented to the audience are, on the face of it, brief questions. What is the acceptable use of force and potential collateral damage when war happens at a distance from the battlefield? Both films can be classed not only as war films, but also as law and justice films which ask the audience what they would do as they watch events unfold through a screen in the same way the characters do. 

Yet while the films both present a tension between law, ethics, and politics, what is ultimately presented is the concept of an alternative legal system to those of standard legal dramas. Both films are influenced by reliable information of real-world experiences. Early versions of the script to Good Kill benefitted from the consultancy of Brandon Bryant, a former sensor operator of unmanned drones. Eye in the Sky based its script, in part, on leaked documents on the website The Intercept demonstrating the chain of command for an operation.

However, both rely on, what Rajah outlines, as the international law concept of a responsibility to protect, an idea that the authority to act comes from a perceived factual and willingness to guarantee protection of those living in a territory. As Bjerre writes in relation to Good Kill, using Spivak’s phrasing, these films rely on white men saving brown women from brown men as a concept of heroism.

In Eye in the Sky, Aaron Paul’s drone pilot character insists on a recalculated collateral damage assessment for the young girl before firing the missile. Good Kill ends with Ethan Hawke’s character launching an unauthorised targeted missile attack on a man who had previously been seen sexually assaulting a woman on numerous occasions, with characters stating during the assaults that he may be a bad guy, but is not their bad guy.

Both films present rapidly changing dynamics of the situation around strikes and how quickly a position can change. For example, in Good Kill, two children run into the frame after a strike has been launched. Yet both also rely on two specific tropes of drone warfare – that strikes carry exact precision and that unmanned vehicles are undetected and silent. In reality, while technological advancement is clear, strikes are imprecise and have a margin of error, and drones are not silent – they make a significant amount of noise and can have a psychological toll on the community under surveillance, or under attack.

Both feature a key justification for the strikes – while there is collateral damage, the consequence of inaction would lead to greater harm. Mirren’s character in Eye in the Sky is presented as wanting to hit a target that she has been tracking at all costs while arguing that the strike would present less collateral damage than two suicide bomber attacks. In Good Kill, the Lt. Colonel, briefing the team about the change in tactics, argues that they are involved in a vicious cycle where neither side can stop killing the other, but it does not matter who started it.

The two films also demonstrate the complexities of collaboration with other countries in armed conflict. In Eye in the Sky, the operation takes place in two locations in the UK and an air base in Nevada, with the strikes in Kenya (a country not at war with the UK/US) using information from a Somalian spy who cannot enter certain districts of Nairobi (another form of internal law state presented in the film). In Good Kill, once the rules of engagement are changed, strikes take place in Yemen and Somalia where the US has no recognised military operation. It is also made clear that the unmanned vehicles do not set off from the UK or US, but a third country closer to the target. Again, audiences are presented with respect of state sovereignty in armed conflict at the cost of eliminating ‘bad targets’.

Conclusion

It must be remembered that there will need to be adaptations when converting stories onto the big screen and some dramatic license needs to be given to these films. No film can ever be one hundred percent accurate in what it presents.

However, in the range of war films and stories available, these films are invaluable, acting as lenses through which audiences can form some engagement with the concepts of international law. They present complex international law principles and discussions in an accessible format for a wide audience and are a more intimate form of consideration through presenting the characters in the same position as the audience – watching events unfold on a screen.

If, as academics, this is taken for granted, then an incredibly useful tool for communication and teaching can be lost. With respect to the films, although perhaps not the most well-known in the war genre, both contribute a lot to the formation of the audience’s experience of armed conflict, even if it is from the safe distance of another country and through a screen.