FilmJuice have my review of Tonje Hessen Shei’s Drone, a shortish documentary about the use of drones in the American War on Terror.

As a long-time science fiction fan who once studied war in an academic setting, I must admit that I find the rise of drone warfare to be an endlessly fascinating subject. Much of what we think of as the modern nation state has been shaped not only by the waging of war but also by the administrative requirements associated with the on-going maintenance of a sizeable security apparatus. Now… imagine what governments might become if that security apparatus were to be entirely automated. Suddenly, there would be no need for a standing military aside from a (largely administrative) officer class and a few special forces types for unusual situations. Given that most Western politicians have abandoned the idea of administering their own country’s infrastructures and economies, would they cling on to the idea of national military forces or would they simply cut a cheque to a military contractor who promised to deliver victory for significantly less than their competition? Given that Western governments have abandoned most administrative duties beyond throwing people in jail and waging wars, would there really be a need for national governments if standing armies became a thing of the past? If a government doesn’t provide healthcare, run schools, repair roads or fight wars then what’s the point of having one at all? Drones aren’t just another piece of military tech, they’re the thin end of the wedge we call tomorrow.  Many academics have realised the significance of this technology and thrown themselves into the study of drones, Tonje Hessen Shei’s Drone is a film that tries to join that conversation but winds up trying to cover way too much ground in way too little space:

Schei’s greatest sin is the failure to corral her ideas and feelings into a single coherent train of thought. Rather than presenting us with arguments or linking up data-points in a manner that encourages further reflection, Schei moves almost at random from complex analysis to footage of angry Peshawaris and then onto footage that could just as easily have been defence industry PR as images culled from the latest generation of video games. The frustrating thing about this documentary is that while it says many interesting things about an absolutely fascinating subject, it feels less like a sustained piece of cinematic argument than a load of raw documentary footage cut together at random.

Drone is a documentary that touches on a number of really interesting questions but rather than looking into the question of why the Pakistani airforce don’t shoot down American drones or how America’s criminally loose definitions of ‘terrorist’ came to form the basis of a rolling campaign of mechanised murder, the film merely touches base with a number of different issues before moving on to the next idea. The weirdest thing about Shei’s decision to cover a lot of ground in so little depth is the fact that the film is only a little over an hour long. Even an extra 20 minutes would have made the difference between ‘incoherent mess’ and ‘structured trains of thought’. Frustrating stuff really.