“American Sniper” Directed by Clint Eastwood

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Director:

Clint Eastwood (“Play Misty for Me”, “Bird”, “Grand Torino”, Oscars for “Unforgiven” and “Million Dollar Baby”)

Main Cast:

Bradley Cooper (“The Hangover”, “Limitless”, “Silver Linings Playbook”)

Sienna Miller (“Layer Cake”, “Stardust”, “Foxcatcher”)

Running Time:  132 Minutes

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In a recent article, I had listed reasons I wasn’t going to watch “American Sniper.”  Gaining the ability to see it at home and wanting to be able to get a perspective on the year’s big movies for the Oscar preview article I hope to write changed my mind.   To reiterate points I made in that article, I’m a big fan of Clint Eastwood and think Bradley Cooper keeps getting progressively better as an actor.

Based on Chris Kyle’s humbly entitled book, “American Sniper:  The Autobiography of the most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History”, we learn that, from a young age, Chris has a talent for shooting a rifle, being much better with live targets than stationary ones, a skill nurtured by his avid hunter father.  His strong father also teaches Chris “God, family, country” and Chris accepts his role as his younger brother Jeff’s protector.  At this point of the movie I half expected him to be adopted by Martha and Jonathan Kent.

When we pick up with Chris (a bulked-up Bradley Cooper, right) as an adult, he is an unmarried 30 year-old Texan who competes unsuccessfully in rodeos with his younger brother Jeff (Keir O’Donnell) and drinks a lot of beer¹.  It’s a lifestyle Jeff describes as “livin’ the dream” and their lives seem set.  That all changes for Chris when he and Jeff watch TV news footage of the 1998 terrorist bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.  Feeling a strong sense of duty, Chris immediately enlists to become a Navy SEAL sniper, despite being substantially older than the other recruits.  We see some of the notoriously demanding SEAL training/conditioning, with a heavy emphasis on cold water.  When Chris goes to Iraq on his first tour, his job is to take positions on rooftops to protect Marines as they go door-to-door to hunt down a high-ranking terrorist with close ties to Osama Bin Laden.  He abandons the rooftop to join the Marines in their search for a terrorist nicknamed “The Butcher” because he uses a drill on his prisoners, including children, and later Chris is part of a shoot out with “The Butcher.”  Other than that, his focus is on being a sniper.  Chris goes on a total of four tours, where he accumulates a total of 160 kills and becomes known to other soldiers as “The Legend.”  Before Chris goes on his first tour, he meets and marries Taya (Sienna Miller) and they eventually have a son and a daughter.

Kyle is conflicted about his kills (his first one is a child¹), which makes him human and, thus, accessible and someone the audience can relate to.  When he is on tour, he is very focused and, even when he is on the phone with Taya, doesn’t miss being home because he has a job to do.  That makes sense; it takes focus to be good at anything, especially something as life-and-death as being a sniper.  When he’s home, his mind is still in Iraq.  You can’t do something as intense as being a sniper and get completely out of that mental/emotional state when you’re home, which we learned from Kathryn Bigelow’s 2008 “The Hurt Locker.”  Taya (below right) is understandably frustrated at not having him home to be a husband and father.  Even though she knew what she was getting into when she married him, it doesn’t help her deal with his inattentiveness when he’s home and his absence.  When Chris comes across his brother Jeff, who joined the Marines, on a military airfield, he learns Jeff does not share Chris’ sense of patriotism and duty.  Jeff only says three words but it’s a great scene and gives the film a dimension it needs.  For whatever reasons, the lessons their father imparts don’t take hold with Jeff the way they do with Chris.  After his tours, Chris spends a lot of time with other war veterans to help them deal with post traumatic stress disorder.  The emotional toll of post-war trauma on its own is bad enough; you have to really respect the way these guys pick up with their lives after losing body parts.  Those scenes are the most powerful in the movie.  (We can only hope the way the Veterans Health Administration’s mismanagement was exposed last year and the increased funding the system will get will improve the quality of the help returning soldiers ─ and those already in the system ─ get going forward.)

“American Sniper” is well made and Cooper (left with director Eastwood), the best thing about the movie, does all he can in a role without much outward emotional range.  All the supporting characters blend in with each other except for Taya Kyle and the film’s two main antagonists, The Butcher and the Syrian master sniper, Mustafa.  Hero stories need villains².  The film is technically tight and the editing and violence are not overdone and the action is easy to follow.  The dust storm scene is pretty impressive and had to be tough to shoot.

Even if you remove politics and all the controversy and debate surrounding “American Sniper” (which is impossible), I don’t see it winning any major Oscars.  The film’s best chances are in the Sound Mixing and Sound Editing categories, where both nominations are well deserved.  They contribute greatly to the authenticity of the gunfire scenes.

While “American Sniper” makes for a good watch, we really don’t learn anything from it that hasn’t been presented in other war movies.  It’s not a necessarily great or unique story.  There’s a definite divide between the film’s enthusiasts ($307 million domestic grosses to date, easily the 84 year-old Eastwood’s best ever) and those that perceive it as pro-war propaganda glorifying both killing and U.S. involvement in unjustified wars.

DPW

February 13, 2015

¹According to this article, Kyle never killed a child and only once killed someone other than a male combatant.

http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/american-sniper/

² The same article states The Butcher was not a real person and Kyle never encountered Mustafa, and their scenarios were fabricated for the movie.

In other words, these emotional high points in the film never happened, even in the book.  Take them out of the movie and it becomes substantially less compelling.  Maybe NBC’s Brian Williams was a consultant on the film.

There’s double-edged tragic irony in the way Chris Kyle was fatally shot by another veteran ─ who Kyle was trying to help ─ at, of all places, a gun range.  The trial for the murder is in its first week.

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