Good Kill : Why is the number of viewers so low? Is it banned in the US?

I don't get it how such a movie like this can have ~8000 views and only a few from the US. Was it banned or removed from movie screens?

Strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

Films critical of the American war industry never get wide release here. At least not during my lifetime. But this movie will be seen by millions when it reaches home video on Tuesday.

I can't imagine any movie getting a wide release in America that contains the following exchange:

A cop to a drone pilot: "How's the War on Terror going?"

Drone pilot to cop: "Kind of like your War on Drugs."

Zing!

Films critical of the American war industry never get wide release here.
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Well i think you're forgetting Green zone,Mr Moore's Iraq documentary
or Lord of war.

I think there wasn't much faith the Good Kill would be a hit so it was
released in a very few markets.

It didn't even play in my town at all.

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Well i think you're forgetting Green zone,Mr Moore's Iraq documentary
or Lord of war.

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Green Zone was kind of an exception, true. As was Body of Lies. Which Moore doc covered Iraq? Lord of War and Good Kill are by the same writer-director, and both got marginal releases. Nothing compared to Zero Dark Thirty or American Sniper or Argo.

Which Moore doc covered Iraq?
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Fahrenheit 9/11.




Lord of war and Good kill()both got marginal releases.
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My recollection is that Lord of war got alot of promotion
while there was very little promotion at all for Good kill.

Not sure where your opinion comes from. Americans have access to war films on either side of the political propaganda spectrum. The "wide release" thing has more to do with who is the big name producing them or who is in the cast and of course, most importantly, the Madison Avenue budget for that particular film.

Yes, it's stupid to suggest that a movie is banned in the U.S. or that it is censored by a limited release. Those beliefs come from America bashers. If a movie is projected to be profitable, it's gonna be released accordingly.

Yea, Tho I Walk Thru The Valley Of The Shadow Of Political Correctness

There are so many of those great lines such as "Was that a War Crime?, which the Captain promptly responded, "Shut the F up" and "If they didn't want us to kill their kids, they shouldn't have brought them to a War Zone." The response: "THEY LIVE THERE." and "No wonder they hate us" which provoked the response, "They hate us because we have Hustler, Hooters and we let women drive." This could be a comedy about a country filled with idiots who have the rational thinking skills of a kitten. But instead it is a testimony of a rogue country who has been able to circumvent law and use hate to create fear and hatred. Bring on the Apocalypse, forget everything Jesus railed about (but use his name as a Weapon).

NO, it's not banned in the U.S. How many times have you heard of a film being banned in the U.S.? We don't nationally censor independent art ventures like it seems most other nations will do from time to time. The U.S. isn't a perfect country, but tell me who is? Understand that American military endeavors are limited in so much as American political interests allow. Someone made a remark about the "dark history of American military exploits" but the fact is, the culpability lays upon the political wing of the government. You act like no other nation's military is ever implicated in wrong doingWhat about the disaster relief efforts in all corners of the world that the American military is continually involved in?

Banned in the US. My favorite documentary=

http://freedocumentaries.org/documentary/bbc-the-power-of-nightmares-the-rise-of-the-politics-of-fear-baby-it-s-cold-outside-season-1-episode-1

This is not "banned in the U.S." It does look interesting and quite provocative but it doesn't appear to be any more so than what Michael Moorer puts out. No, this is not banned at all..I just added it to my Netflix que.

It was at one time. It could not be shown on American TV. But yes it is now shown and I hope you find it as interesting as I did.

The Power of Nightmares is fantastic but I got it from Netflix, so I wouldn't call it "banned."

There is more censorship in the USA than in most other countries.

The US military is involved in more wrongdoing than any others at the moment, with no justification. The US is supposed to be first world, and to follow the rule of law.

The US army was involved in more war crimes in WW2 than the SS, though probably less than the Soviets. During Vietnam there were many atrocities, and many attacks on Vietnamese and Americans - fraking became very common. Two aircraft carriers were put out of action by sabotage carried out by American servicemen. Mass killings and abuse have occurred throughout the illegal occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The common factor is that the US military has a history of being trigger happy, arrogant, feeling they are above the law, committing atrocities at will - never being prosecuted - and lacking in discipline. Not a professional force at all, but a band of thugs.

I can not, in good conscience, argue with the spirit of your ultimate assertion but I will attempt to temper your view point by painting a significant context from which you might reconsider your opinion.

When it was another time in geo-political history and not so long ago, these "thugs," as you put it, saved the world, with a healthy hat tip to the Soviets, of course. Before you are tempted to dismiss my assertion as patriotic hyperbole, give pause. It happens to be my opinion but some opinions are born from positions of greater clarity than others. This is one of those instances.

You say that the U.S. military was involved in more war crimes than the S.S. but there are a couple of things wrong with that line of thinking. For one, the S.S. was but a segment of the German military, para-military even as they were more like Hitler's quality control so it stands to significant reason that their indiscretions, as notable and heinous as they were, wouldn't out number "war crime" instances perpetrated by an entire nation's army. Secondly, your assertion is simply a blanket statement with out much substantiation. The phrase "war crimes" is a rather nebulous one and can take on a great many meanings and likewise, levels of severity.

With some of these rather preposterous claims, you are someone, it seems, who is resigned to considering the American military through a jaundiced eye. I would almost presume that you are not American but that is certainly not a given. Regardless, it is important to understand and thus, accept, that without the United States military, your life would most probably be radically different and mind you, most probably not for the better.

Are you stupid or can you back up that the US actual censors movies? I just watched this movie via DVD from my local library system which shows that it was never censored. Maybe it just wasn't a good movie and therefore wasn't showed widely.

See: Operation Condor (not the film); Office of Standards and Practices; FCC

The fact that you know all that and are able to post about it openly on a US-based web site is pretty much proof that there is very little censorship in the United States.

It wasn't a major studio release, and only received limited release in theaters due to the fact that it is a slow drama about the ethics of modern warfare - not a subject that would appeal to a broad spectrum of audiences.

Plus, it moved along at a snail's pace and was overly dull, merely repeating ad nauseum how terrible drones are. The film's message could have easily and better portrayed in a short film. It just wasn't a very good movie.

I liked this movie more than you, but I definitely agree with you re: the pacing. They've could've improved this movie greatly by cutting 15-20 minutes.

A movie artificially suppressed without being outright banned is effectively banned, with the apologists retaining the right to say "well it wasn't BANNED!" Similar to how blacks were "allowed" to vote if they would tolerate beatings, pass tests based on education they couldn't get, etc "well they weren't BANNED!" A movie about what the US does to sovereign countries and lies about daily isn't interesting to the American public? Telling isn't it?

Thank you all for the answers!

Strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

Anti-war movies as a whole haven't done well at the box office since 9/11, which is probably why they didn't invest a lot in marketing or distributing Good Kill.

They just decided it was most economical to go Direct-to-video.

It's really not that different from movies that did have big audiences, like American Sniper ar The Hurt Locker. So no, it's not about politics or subject matter or even quality. It's just balancing the expected returns against making an advertising budget and doing the distribution to theaters.

Can you buy this on DVD?

LoL Not banned per seits just a whitewashed topic that U.S. citizens are trained not to think about too much. This movie got zero marketing in the U.S.. Hell, its hard to to even get the film to come up in a Goggle search. If you don't type in the film name exactly your search results will be all filler. The guy that the film is based on, Brandon Bryant, doesn't have a U.S. wikipedia page, though there is a German Wikipedia page about him that you can get your browser to translate for you.

It doesn't mean that much to me to mean that much to you. -Neil Young

I don't know where the number ~8,000 comes from? Are you referring to the number at the top of the Home Page which now shows 15,000 reviews? Anyhoozle, I don't think this movie has a large base of viewers, perhaps only Righties coz Lefties are more interested in stuff that doesn't involve things they're scared of, like things that blow up. I'm always astounded at the number of movie Bigshots in Hollywood who actually think some of these movies were a good idear to fund. And then when it bombs at the Box Office they go right to TV or worse right to DVD.
Besides I think people are tired of seeing drones doing their thing, you can see hundreds of drones blowing up the bad guys on Youtube. And by the way, I read a startling statistic recently, something like ~400 targeted bad guys met their end by droning, but this administration has carried out over 90,000 droning missions. And lest we forget, Obama and David Axelrod (Iknow what yer thinking, can you imagine if Senior Adviser Carl Rove had met with Bush, and discussed droning missions?? Why the heck was Axelrod present? Oh well) and the Security Team used to meet on Tuesdays and would pull out a 'deck of cards' with the bad guys pictures on them and they'd flip through them and say, "Drone this one, drone this one" and so on, like some sort of game. And after a series of successful Big Cheese Bad Guys had been taken care of The President allegedly said, "I'm pretty good at killing people". So, I think this movie will try to depict how War, at arms length, is nothing more than a video game using drones.

Well, It's on Showtime right now. So it's definitely not banned now if it ever was.

What an odd question, and where did you come up with the number of 8,ooo? I'm mystified at why questions like yours are axed all the time on IMDB, and also questions like, "Why is this movie rating only X.X", I see that question all the time. Weird. My guess is that movies on IMDB achieve the rating they do because most people, not all of course, there are about 35% of Americans who are anti-social loony tunes, give an honest rating. Regardless if someone gives a movie a lower rating than one I give doesn't make the movie less enjoyable to me. Some people don't like dark humor and they'll criticize a film to pieces, others will claim the latest piece of trash by David Lynch transcends both peaks simultaneously. Whatever. It is what it is.

You really should check the dates before acting like I was that stupid to write 8000 voters. It was around 8000 at the time I created the topic on the message board. Of course in 456 days this number increased but it's still not that much (around 17000).
My question is not like the one you quoted. I was just wondering, how a film like this, which is about a really actual, important and interesting topic and it's not a bad film at all, plus there's one Ethan Hawke in the leading role (who is quite a great actor with 4 academy award nominations), could reach that low number of viewers (or IMDB voters if you like). There are many, many much worse films even in the same genre with much more recognition.

Well I may have triggered bad reactions with using the word "banned". I either should have used another word or somehow indicate that it's more or less an ironic question. I'm a European person and don't know exactly how it is in the US but I didn't really think this movie was banned in the proper (legal) sense of the word.
Just it is sooo interesting (what another commenter pointed out) that people in the US are "educated" to ignore and not think too much about these things.

"Strange game. The only winning move is not to play."