Someone playing Call of Duty or Halo presses the trigger, and bang, a character dies. But they’re not actually dead — they can respawn and get shot again, and again, and again. Victims of American drone strikes, though, don’t respawn.

Andrew Niccol’s Good Kill concerns one of these grave-piling gamers, Tom Egan (Ethan Hawke), who spends his days working in an air-conditioned room in Las Vegas handling a joystick with the ability to blow-up almost anything anywhere in the world. After numerous tours to Iraq, he now serves from his home country and sleeps at home with his family. However, if he were playing Call of Duty there would be little reason for him to struggle with PTSD, or for his boss to recommend “I and I” (intoxication and intercourse) during his downtime.

For Tom and his coworkers, there is enough distance from the victims through the screen and the silence of his office to ignore what they are actually doing. But Tom tires of being in front of a screen and longs to jump back in a real plane where he will fight outside of the comfort and safety of a cubicle.

The subtext of America’s war policies (which seem uncompromisingly close to that of the terrorists) is what gives the film its cerebral and visceral vigour. The film centers on this question: Is there such a thing as a good kill?

Tom is unsure. He follows the orders given to him by his commander, but he’s lost the eagerness and enthusiasm to kill displayed by younger soldiers around him. Niccol captures the horrors of this attitude by juxtaposing it with Tom’s turmoil.

This theme is what gives the “action scenes” — all done through the poetic distance of a drone surveillance feed — their power. We are never given any perspective from the ground where the people are being bombed; Niccol keeps a chilly distance from the attacks that makes them all the more terrifying. There are no screams or cries, just pixilated dust on a computer screen, as virtual as Halo.

Niccol’s most recent efforts, The Host and In Time, demonstrate his ability to infuse his films with thoughtful themes, but, unfortunately, he fails to create engaging plots or characters. Similarly, Good Kill has some very powerful moments, such as when Tom is commanded to kill innocent people; however, his strife away from the military seems clichéd and forced.

We’ve seen soldiers in movies struggle with their relationships at home between tours, and we’ve seen the strain in marriages because of PTSD, but using such common themes isn’t the major problem with this story; instead, it’s that every character other than Tom is entirely one-dimensional. They are simply present for exposition, spewing out social criticism, or adding conflict to the plot. Although American Sniper lacked Good Kill’s ambiguity, at least it had strong performances that captured the insides of all its characters. Other than Tom, I’m not sure if the characters even have insides. Andrew Niccol is a filmmaker with strong ideas, but he cannot seem to express them through characters and plot.

First person shooters are gratuitous and unreal in their gun violence. These video games can be enjoyed like interactive puzzles, but the horror of Good Kill is that similar activity may be used for mass killings by the American military. They are not blowing up pixels, but the flesh of human beings.