Probably not something you're going to re-watch but for me it was enjoyable.
If you want something new this may not be the right choice, the general story is pretty standard: Newbie gets to the camp, meets more experienced mentor, experiences combat, handles it badly for a while, twist, he ends up on his own and somehow completes the mission.
There are some cool parts to the story though. Most notably for me was the parallel between Leo and the standard combat drones. He more or less wants the US to consider the consequences to their new weapon systems, that's why he does what he does. You can see it throughout the movie including the collateral damage from drone strikes, but more interesting is the fact that their combat robots have a tendency to fire first. Sure their targets are armed and behaving in a threatening manner. But as demonstrated by Leo defusing the situation by the relief truck it doesn't have to end with a firefight.
There's also an interesting parallel between them sending a drone pilot to experience combat in order to understand what happens when they fire a missile and the US learning the consequences of their weapons by one of those weapons turning against them. That's why Leo *MUST* be the one to do it.
All in all a solid film. But it does suffer from some boneheaded mistakes including: the protagonist having over 56000 flight hours, that's 6 years 24/7, or 18 years full time. As such I would expect him to be in his late thirties at least, but I don't think the character was more than 25... The Balkans being mentioned frequently despite the movie taking place in Ukraine some 600 miles and several countries away. And sure that one can be handwaved away, most of the time they are referring to a person, "the terror of the Balkans" and therefore not technically wrong. But throughout the movie it seems like they are referring to that title as if it has local significance...
If you want something new this may not be the right choice, the general story is pretty standard: Newbie gets to the camp, meets more experienced mentor, experiences combat, handles it badly for a while, twist, he ends up on his own and somehow completes the mission.
There are some cool parts to the story though. Most notably for me was the parallel between Leo and the standard combat drones. He more or less wants the US to consider the consequences to their new weapon systems, that's why he does what he does. You can see it throughout the movie including the collateral damage from drone strikes, but more interesting is the fact that their combat robots have a tendency to fire first. Sure their targets are armed and behaving in a threatening manner. But as demonstrated by Leo defusing the situation by the relief truck it doesn't have to end with a firefight.
There's also an interesting parallel between them sending a drone pilot to experience combat in order to understand what happens when they fire a missile and the US learning the consequences of their weapons by one of those weapons turning against them. That's why Leo *MUST* be the one to do it.
All in all a solid film. But it does suffer from some boneheaded mistakes including: the protagonist having over 56000 flight hours, that's 6 years 24/7, or 18 years full time. As such I would expect him to be in his late thirties at least, but I don't think the character was more than 25... The Balkans being mentioned frequently despite the movie taking place in Ukraine some 600 miles and several countries away. And sure that one can be handwaved away, most of the time they are referring to a person, "the terror of the Balkans" and therefore not technically wrong. But throughout the movie it seems like they are referring to that title as if it has local significance...