Two soldiers are tasked with deciding the fate of a terrorist with a single push of a button. As the action plays out in real time, their window to use a deadly military drone on the target slowly closes. With time running out, the soldiers begin to question what the real motives are behind the ordered lethal attack.
While Rick Rosenthal's Drones has the balls to attack the issue head on, the lack of nuance in tackling a complex issue undermines his efforts and that of a game cast.
Drones is the equivalent of an issue-driven movie about the NSA featuring agents who feel really creepy about spying on people. That's not the problem.
When horror movies and history meet. And with a disturbing and discomforting persistent dread, Drones is in no way standard entertainment, nor should it be. Or as Dirty Wars doc director Jeremy Scahill solemnly observed, 'You can't surrender to a drone.'
A middling real-time thriller that chronicles a fictive crisis for two Air Force personnel, who find themselves at loggerheads when they spot an apparent terrorist thousands of miles away on surveillance video.
