Film
A private drone pilot, Neil Wistin (Sean Bean – The Martian, Pixels) spends his office hours flying covert mission for war ravaged areas overseas. Compared to his day job, home life is rather boring and mediocre, living in the suburbs, with his family. Yet, neither Neil’s wife Ellen (Mary McCormack) or son Shane (Maxwell Haynes) know the truth about his life.
Neil is not the only one with secrets, however. As Ellen is cheating on him, and Shane has been secretly visiting his ailing grandfather.
All is mundane, and routine, until a whistle-blower website exposes the mission flown by Neil and his company, putting them all in danger when a Pakistani businessman, Imir Shaw (Patrick Sabongul – Power Rangers, Warcraft: The Beginning) track him down, and confronts him in a tense stand-off.
Drone is an interesting concept, that missed the mark. There is almost no action, and the drama has no palpable tension. One is even at some point not sure whether to side with Neil, or against him.
With drone warfare being a topic that everyone wants to make a movie about, there are bound to be those who get the formula right, and those who miss the mark. If you’re looking for a film about this, and the fight of ideologies, this may not be the film for you. It is something to watch, when you are bored and lazy, but do not expect to have much chance to exercise the brain.
Drone is an average movie, with a cast that deserved more. It is lacking in tension, drama, action, and even technical setting for the drones. A low budget feel, to a run of the mill attempt at an action movie.
Disc
Overall, the disc is of a decent technical quality, save for a glaring spelling error in the menu system.
Drone is available now, to purchase on disc, in South Africa.
Video
Video is encoded at a high average bitrate. There are no visible artefacts on-screen, nor any visible colour bleed. Detail is good in darker scenes.
Viewers who have the necessary hardware or software could scale up to a larger or higher resolution screen, should they wish.
Audio
Audio is presented in a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, with dialogue clear via the centre channel. The surround channels are used to expand to expand the on-screen world, further drawing the viewer into the story, but due to the film being more drama than action, these are not used to a great extent.
Navigation
Navigation is simple, with a static main menu. There are text menu items to play the main feature, or access a scenes sub-menu. Even though this menu item is spelt “scences”. When you have one job, that is to type two words, yet you get one of those words wrong, one has to wonder about the quality control for discs.
The scenes sub-menus each have six small, colour, motion thumbnails, for a total of twelve chapters. While these are numbered, they are not labelled, meaning that navigating to a particular part of the main feature will require some guesswork.
Bonus Features
There are no bonus features, other than trailers for Armed Response, Amityville: The Awakening, and Kidnap. These autoplay at the beginning of the disc, but are not accessible again, via the disc menu system.
Packaging
Packaging is basic, with a poster on front, with title and main cast. On the back is a very brief synopsis, some stills from the film, and the usual scattering of technical labels.
