American Sniper (B- or 2.5/4 stars)
Based on the late Chris Kyle's life/autobiography, 'American Sniper' (directed by legend Clint Eastwood) shows Kyle's (Bradley Cooper) life as an impressionable son, here-he-is-there-he-goes husband/father, and, most famously, America's deadliest sniper (160 confirmed kills + another 100 or so probables). The film opens with Kyle on an Iraqi rooftop on the precipice of making a judgment call on whether or not to shoot a little boy holding a grenade. Instead of following through on this right then & there, the movie segues into a series of flashbacks to establish Kyle's 'background'. i.e., his God-fearing childhood, hunting with his pop, his learning about the evils of the world, his being a cowboy, his enlistment/training as a SEAL, the awkward 'meet cute' with his eventual wife, Taya (Sienna Miller), and on to his initial deployment.
By the end of this series of flashbacks, the film returns again to that Iraqi rooftop and its grim, but matter-of-fact conclusion. Chris Kyle goes on to become a sniper legend in Iraq & keeps signing up for more tours of duty (4!), much to the utter despair & grief of Taya & their small children. When Chris finally decides to come home for good, he is withdrawn from the normal world & finds that he can't quite get the war out of his head; that is until he discovers that helping other vets & victims of PTSD brings him some solace. And then, just like that, the film ends abruptly by showing us on title cards how the past 10 minutes of his PTSD recuperation was followed by him being shot & killed at a shooting range by one of those vets. His death (and fall-out from his death) is perfunctorily consigned to those titles cards & a montage of stock footage of thousands of bystanders honoring the real Chris Kyle as his funeral procession drives towards Cowboys Stadium.
For me, 'American Sniper' is not a bad film, but I can't say it's a resounding success, either. Yes, it's technically a "competent motion picture". Yes, Bradley Cooper gives a performance of focused conviction. He gained weight for the role, speaks with a great Texan drawl, & is relatively believable as a sniper. Yes, some of the split-second, life-or-death shooting/battle sequences are effective; and riddled with tension. And this is a very rah-rah type of war film that many Americans will appreciate and/or love. Having said that, much of the proceedings are repetitive (deployment, home, deployment, home), and some aspects also ring false.
While the sniper/shooting sequences ring true (and as I mentioned, a few are riveting), they become a bit redundant and, quite a few of the domestic scenes back home in America felt off. Chris & Taya's relationship felt like decently-acted Hollywood gunk. Furthermore, for a film that seems to want to show how the families back home are affected, we're really only given a handful of scenes where the nagging wife character just wishes that her husband would stop re-enlisting. Like, really -- that's all ya got to say about the family back home, Eastwood? Also, as depicted in this movie, Kyle is uncertain of his barbaric actions in Iraq. And yet, the unease that Kyle appears to feel in the movie is at odds with the racist, eager killer of his own self-mythologizing memoirs. So ... who IS the real Chris Kyle?
'American Sniper' is also a fairly nuance-free affair. Everything is executed in broad strokes with little depth or panache, except for the occasional moment when Bradley Cooper can imbue Kyle with a vulnerable sense of humanity that may have been heightened for this "hero" story, anyway. What might have been a penetrating movie about the war & its' after-effects (a la 2009's The Hurt Locker) becomes a mostly standard war flick that draws from the strength of its shooter sequences too often. That may be exactly what a lot of people want to see, but it's not what I wanted out of this story. I expected to learn a lot more about the man before, during, and particularly AFTER his tours in Iraq.
For me, 'American Sniper' is a watchable, decent movie that is lacking a bit in scope, insight, & context about the man it is celebrating. Perhaps the story - as drawn from Kyle's memoirs - just wasn't there to be told. Perhaps he is not the ideal subject for a biopic. You know, it seems that Clint Eastwood's intent here was to show the corrosive effects of violence & war. But the fact that Chris Kyle didn't exactly feel the same way about war as Eastwood makes this an awkward, non-committal enterprise to ponder. 'American Sniper' will make tons of $$ at the box office and, it'll be great to see an American film do well. But I also believe that people will leave the theater convinced that they've just seen a "great movie" when they probably can't put a finger on what they thought was particularly great about it.
By the end of this series of flashbacks, the film returns again to that Iraqi rooftop and its grim, but matter-of-fact conclusion. Chris Kyle goes on to become a sniper legend in Iraq & keeps signing up for more tours of duty (4!), much to the utter despair & grief of Taya & their small children. When Chris finally decides to come home for good, he is withdrawn from the normal world & finds that he can't quite get the war out of his head; that is until he discovers that helping other vets & victims of PTSD brings him some solace. And then, just like that, the film ends abruptly by showing us on title cards how the past 10 minutes of his PTSD recuperation was followed by him being shot & killed at a shooting range by one of those vets. His death (and fall-out from his death) is perfunctorily consigned to those titles cards & a montage of stock footage of thousands of bystanders honoring the real Chris Kyle as his funeral procession drives towards Cowboys Stadium.
For me, 'American Sniper' is not a bad film, but I can't say it's a resounding success, either. Yes, it's technically a "competent motion picture". Yes, Bradley Cooper gives a performance of focused conviction. He gained weight for the role, speaks with a great Texan drawl, & is relatively believable as a sniper. Yes, some of the split-second, life-or-death shooting/battle sequences are effective; and riddled with tension. And this is a very rah-rah type of war film that many Americans will appreciate and/or love. Having said that, much of the proceedings are repetitive (deployment, home, deployment, home), and some aspects also ring false.
While the sniper/shooting sequences ring true (and as I mentioned, a few are riveting), they become a bit redundant and, quite a few of the domestic scenes back home in America felt off. Chris & Taya's relationship felt like decently-acted Hollywood gunk. Furthermore, for a film that seems to want to show how the families back home are affected, we're really only given a handful of scenes where the nagging wife character just wishes that her husband would stop re-enlisting. Like, really -- that's all ya got to say about the family back home, Eastwood? Also, as depicted in this movie, Kyle is uncertain of his barbaric actions in Iraq. And yet, the unease that Kyle appears to feel in the movie is at odds with the racist, eager killer of his own self-mythologizing memoirs. So ... who IS the real Chris Kyle?
'American Sniper' is also a fairly nuance-free affair. Everything is executed in broad strokes with little depth or panache, except for the occasional moment when Bradley Cooper can imbue Kyle with a vulnerable sense of humanity that may have been heightened for this "hero" story, anyway. What might have been a penetrating movie about the war & its' after-effects (a la 2009's The Hurt Locker) becomes a mostly standard war flick that draws from the strength of its shooter sequences too often. That may be exactly what a lot of people want to see, but it's not what I wanted out of this story. I expected to learn a lot more about the man before, during, and particularly AFTER his tours in Iraq.
For me, 'American Sniper' is a watchable, decent movie that is lacking a bit in scope, insight, & context about the man it is celebrating. Perhaps the story - as drawn from Kyle's memoirs - just wasn't there to be told. Perhaps he is not the ideal subject for a biopic. You know, it seems that Clint Eastwood's intent here was to show the corrosive effects of violence & war. But the fact that Chris Kyle didn't exactly feel the same way about war as Eastwood makes this an awkward, non-committal enterprise to ponder. 'American Sniper' will make tons of $$ at the box office and, it'll be great to see an American film do well. But I also believe that people will leave the theater convinced that they've just seen a "great movie" when they probably can't put a finger on what they thought was particularly great about it.