Drone (2017)

I wish I could give this movie a zero star. I watch a lot of movies and this is no doubt the worst movie I've ever watched

Sean Bean plays Neil, a military contractor. Unlike other contractors his contract involves flying drones from back home in the USA, not boots on the ground. He does his job, goes home and lives his life.The legality and morality of drone warfare is a current hot topic, and is the core of this thriller. When Neil is introduced to Imir, with the intention of selling his recently deceased father's boat, all of that comes boiling out in some well played scenes.Unfortunately, those scenes don't overwhelm some of the terribleness earlier on and later in the movie. The director and writer clearly had a message they wanted to say, and they say it with some of extremely heavy handed dialogue. These scenes potentially also lead to some of the bad performances of the actors, as in other, more intimate scenes, the acting can be decent.The movie also throws in a couple like sideplots which don't really go anywhere. The movie wanted to show that everybody has secrets, but it doesn't really contribute to the main storyline, and wasn't needed.The movie isn't horrible, and there were certainly times it was enjoyable, but the reverse is also true where there were points that were awful.

As the title suggests, Drone is about drone warfare. Safely ensconced behind computer screens, military contractors wage war thousands of miles away, it is remote controlled bombing raids.A drone strike in a small Pakistan town in Miramsha, Pakistan in 2016 leads to collateral damage. Civilians died, a man going off to work, his wife waving him goodbye, two women walking home.One year later Imir Shah knocks on the house of Neil Wistin in order to buy his boat which is for sale. Neil is emotionally distraught as his father has just passed away. However Imir has been tracking Neil and discovered that he has been lying to his family, he is a drone operator and he wants Neil to confess to his family what he has done.Drone after its harrowing beginning slows down the pace. We learn about the Wistin family coming to terms of the loss of a loved one but deep down it is a dysfunctional family.Imir skilfully invades Neil's life, helping him write his late father's eulogy but I find it hard to believe that even an IT expert like Imir could unearth so much about Neil and his family's activities.The film has a dramatic conclusion that leads to Neil to reconsider what he has done but it is not a wholly successful in its aims.

I am a huge fan of Sean Bean and thought that his acting in this was it's only saving grace. The wife and son characters were barely watchable. I had to fast forward through all of the scenes with the son in them. He was difficult to watch. I was able to get through the whole movie, but by the end, I didn't seem to care about the characters or the story line. I think that giving it a 2 rating was very generous.