‘American Sniper’ a bold but grueling experience
Whatever your opinion is of America’s endless and ongoing misadventures in the Middle East, it’s likely to be confirmed by the harrowing war drama American Sniper. Based on the memoir by Navy SEAL sharpshooter Chris Kyle, recounting his four tours of duty in Iraq, with vigorous and muscular direction by Clint Eastwood, the film plunges viewers relentlessly into the chaos of post-9/11 U.S. military ops in the desert war zone and never lets up.
If you go into this movie believing the rhetoric that America is waging a just and necessary campaign against global terrorism fought by heroic young troops risking their lives, limbs, mental health and futures, every day for the greater good, this film supports that belief. If, on the other hand, you believe American youth are being sold a patriotic bill of goods to be sucked into the war machine that spits them out as robotic monsters capable of unspeakable acts in a pointless battle for dubious goals that can probably never be “won”—and then abandons them, broken and hopeless, when they are no longer of any use—that theory is borne out in this film as well.
It may be that both sides of this debate are plausibly true, in which case Eastwood’s film is brilliant and uncompromising in depicting the complex realities of modern warfare. Personally, I admire the way Eastwood put the film together, the punchy way he replicates the stark chaotic horror of this particular battle zone, where soldiers are faced with constant, impossible split-second decisions as to who are innocent bystanders and who are potential assassins. But watching this movie is like being bludgeoned; I hated just about every minute of the experience of sitting through it, from war-porn battle scenes to the empty pomp of military funerals after the fact.
Scripted by Jason Hall, the film begins with a powerful moment of crisis. Sharpshooter Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) is stationed on an Iraq rooftop, covering a military operation going on in the street. His roving gun sights pick out a man on his cell phone on a balcony, and a young woman and a little boy emerging into the street. It’s his call to decide who’s a “valid” target; repercussions will be horrendous if he guesses wrong.
Flashback to Chris’ boyhood in Texas, where he learns to shoot from his hunter father, a man who raises his sons to be neither sheep nor wolves, but “sheepdogs” protecting others. A part-time rodeo cowboy, Chris joins the military at age 30, where his skills earn him a place as a SEAL. A few days after he marries Taya (Sienna Miller), he’s called up for his first tour in Iraq. Chris excels at his job, earning the nickname “Legend” among the troops.
But he internalizes the horror of the experience to the point that he can barely function stateside. Driven by the need to protect his comrades, he keeps going back to Iraq, despite Taya’s desperate tantrums over the way he continues to choose the war over her and their kids. Cooper is excellent in conveying the mask of edgy amiability that Chris employs to conceal his increasingly profound psychological turmoil.
The bravery of these men and women on the front lines is not in question. The tragedy is, after everything they suffer and endure, along with the suffering they inflict on others, that they don’t dare question the wisdom of our invasion of this region and its devastating consequences. (As intense as the action scenes are in their moral ambiguity, it’s still the kind of action movie in which, when an Iraqi sniper who is also “just doing his job” gets killed, you can be sure some yahoos in the audience will cheer.)
One cogent point the film makes that both sides can agree on: Americans at home have no idea this war is going on. Unlike Vietnam, it’s not on the nightly news; the sons and daughters of the middle class (what’s left of it) aren’t in danger of being drafted, and so it doesn’t impinge on people’s daily lives. At best, Eastwood’s film forces viewers to confront the grim reality of the war being waged in our name.
AMERICAN SNIPER
*** (out of four)
With Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller. Written by Jason Hall from the book by Chris Kyle. Directed by Clint Eastwood. A Warner Bros. release. Rated R. 132 minutes. PHOTO: Bradley Cooper stars in ‘American Sniper,’ directed by Clint Eastwood and based on the true story of Navy SEAL sharpshooter Chris Kyle.
