American Sniper isn't a movie for everyone, but it is a movie for anyone who is willing to look at every complicated facet of the war story. Plenty of other war movies in the past have squarely made their point: war is evil.
Clint Eastwood's latest film doesn't say war is beautiful, but, as Kyle Smith of the New York Post said, it "nobly presents the case for the other side."
Set mostly in contemporary war-torn Iraq, American Sniper is a biopic based on the autobiography of Chris Kyle, America's most prolific sniper, having put out over 160 targets before he himself was killed in 2013. The film, while focusing much on Kyle as its centerpiece, veers from a lot of what many of Kyle's critics call self-aggrandizing in his autobiography.
Amy Nicholson of the Village Voice points out that Eastwood excluded Kyle's three most incredible claims: he was hired to snipe armed looters from the top of the Superdome in the wake of Hurricane Katrina; he killed two men who attempted to carjack him and was released by the police who were impressed by his Navy SEAL record; and he got into a bar fight with Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, who won $1.8 million in a defamation lawsuit against Kyle.
"Cautiously, Eastwood has chosen to omit Kyle's self-mythologizing altogether, which is itself a distortion of his character," wrote Nicholson. "The humble Kyle onscreen is Kyle with his flaws written out. We're not watching a biopic. We're watching a drama about an idealized soldier, a patriot beyond reproach, which bolsters Kyle's legend while gutting the man."
However, as many critics have pointed out, the strength of a movie is not whether it follows the book it is based on to the letter; its strength lies in whether it can stand alone as a movie -- and American Sniper can do exactly just that.
Much of the movie's appeal is in Bradley Cooper's performance. Cooper, who worked hard to pack on 30 pounds for the film, has been all over the map when it comes to his acting prowess. He starred in The Hangover, Silver Linings Playbook, and American Hustle, and still has plenty to show in American Sniper.
"Mr. Cooper turns out to be just as brilliant at intensely dramatic inwardness," wrote Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal. "In his extraordinarily austere portrayal, Kyle's silences are eloquent, his impassivity interesting, his inner conflicts implied without a trace of sentimentality."
On the surface, we see Kyle seemingly unburdened about the moral perils of going to war. Unlike other soldiers portrayed before him, he can push away his thoughts and feelings about killing another human just as easily as he can swat a fly.
Kyle doesn't question the war, or why he is there. He knows his purpose; he is there to be the sworn protector of, in order of importance, his brothers at war, his country, and his family. The rest of the movie is, as Independent's Geoffrey Macnab puts it, as simple-minded.
"Don't look to Clint Eastwood's new film for perspective on, or political insight into, the Iraq War," Macnab said. "Iraqi insurgents are characterized by U.S. soldiers as 'savages.' Fallujah is referred to as 'the new Wild West of the old Middle East,' a place where even the dirt tastes like 'dogshit,' and the film makes little attempt to consider the suffering of the Iraqi people."
Still, for Macnab, the movie "is not afraid to show Kyle's dark side and the contradictions in his personality -- and that is why it has such resonance."
The New York Post's Kyle Smith pointed out that the depth of the character is portrayed right from the film's very beginning, when he must decide whether to shoot an Iraqi woman and a child who might be carrying an explosive.
"He processes the staggering consequences of making the wrong decision -- even he knows that, should his suspicions prove correct, to take a life is an immense thing," Smith wrote.
Anders Wright of UT San Diego also described Kyle as a "thoroughly confident warrior who can't bring himself to look at how shaken he's actually been by the experiences he's had." Although Kyle is portrayed as a patriot, sometimes to the point of becoming overzealous about his duties to his brothers and his country, it is not necessarily a positive thing.
Smith looked into some of the instances showing just how damaged the man had become from his four tours in Iraq: when he gets home and heads to a hometown bar without his wife Taya, played by Sienna Miller, knowing he's in the country, and when he looks down at the floor when thanked for his service.
"Cowboys, adventurers, joyriders -- these are exactly what our best fighting men are not," Smith said. "They suffer merely to be alive, when so many brothers lie in boxes draped in flags. American Sniper does honor to them."
American Sniper has garnered comparisons to Howard Hawks' Sergeant York, and Brad Cooper's Chris Kyle to Gary Cooper's Alvin York, who won a Medal of Honor for killing 28 Germans during the First World War. Jeremy Renner's Sgt. William James in Katherine Bigelow's The Hurt Locker also comes to mind.
Eastwood, at his peak at 84, has shown "his finest directorial effort since the 2008 Gran Torino."
Richard Corliss of TIME said it best:
"Utterly in command of his epic material, he films the Iraqi action in terse, tense panoramas with little cinematic editorializing, as if he were an old Greek or Hebrew God who is never surprised at man's ability to kill his fellow men, or to find reasons to do so."
