What starts out as real strong premise slowly fizzles into a cliché' burned out soldier story. Despite what some of the reviews by users might tell you, it is not an anti-war film. There are plenty of statements about why the war is necessary, and in truth most of the airmen in this movie are fine with their mission until the CIA becomes involved. Ethan Hawke's character is pushed past the breaking point because of this turn, but he is already well on his way before this. Even a passing thought might tell you that drone warfare is actually better because you are able to discriminate your targets better before deciding to attack. It also places the decision to attack higher in the chain of command. So what the movie cheaply does is to add an element where the mission is subjugated by morally wrong orders. It would be much better to have left it a gray area where people could make up their own minds about what is right and what is wrong. If you are going to make this type of film, don't make it easy on the audience. So after the interesting part of the film is ruined, we are left to watch Hawke's character spiral down the typical alcohol abuse-nobody understands- my life sucks story line. Its kind of hard to feel sorry for someone who has a nice house, a beautiful wife, great kids, a cool car, a hot coworker who hits on him, and a job he really doesn't even have to do. We are meant to sympathize with him because he wants to fly real jets, when that's something that most people will never get to do. In the end I think he's pretty selfish, and kind of a jerk for slapping January Jones around when she plays a completely understanding and in love housewife. He even gets out of a DUI, people are so eager to be nice to him. The film would have done much better to focus on the Drone war aspect and to present realistic non CIA bad guy missions then let the audience decide the morality. As I said starts out with great premise but quickly dies when it changes gears.
