I think if you read the story as bad guy turns good guy, then clearly it is a cliché. But my experience, when I spent three years working with young people in the townships on issues principally around HIV/AIDS, is that people are usually neither entirely good or bad. They are usually variations of both. Just because someone is a carjacker doesn't mean they are a ruthless cold-blooded murderer.

Having been in the military myself, there is an awful moment when you're in this moment of conflict.

One reads many scripts, and some of them are good and some of them are not, but every now and then, one really grabs you. You simply can't put it down.

The question becomes, because we're remotely far away from the territory we're about to bomb, does it make it easier to do it? That it is an important question, and the military is asking those questions.

You have to separate artistic ability from ethnic origin. Not only am I not black, I am also not a woman, therefore how can I direct women? I am also only 42, therefore how can I direct someone who's 60? So you see where the argument ends up? If you take it to its logical conclusion, I would have to walk around and point a video camera at myself. And who the hell is interested in that?

And for the people who promote drones as the answer to everything, there is a danger from being distanced from the reality of the ugly mess of war.

I am a story-teller working with a craft. My job is to use my craft - which is a different thing to my race - and tell a story well.