Okay, forget your politics,
forget whether you're a liberal or a conservative, and put aside your
feelings about the war in Iraq. Disregard your personal feelings
about insurgents, the American troops and guerrilla warfare. If you
don't you will find this film impossible to fully experience. And
it is well worth experiencing.
If Clint
Eastwood had never been an actor, his contribution to the movies as a
director would be a unique and fairly amazing one. Yes, he won the
Best Director Oscar twice (for “Unforgiven” 1992 and “Million
Dollar Baby” 2003) and both those films also won Best Picture. And
incidentally, are both on my “10 Favorite Movies Ever Made” list.
But outside of those Clint has also directed such wonderful pictures
as “A Perfect World” (1993), “Absolute Power” (1997), “Mystic
River” (2003), “Letters From Iwo Jima” (2006), and “Gran
Turino” (2008). There have also been a few duds, but overall he
has churned out great work as a director.
And “American Sniper”
is another great one. In it Bradley Cooper is Chris Kyle, a good ol'
boy who grew up wanting to be a cowboy. After seeing the US Embassy
Bombings in 1998 he enlists in the navy, becomes a Navy SEAL and
eventually is deployed to Iraq. There, his sure-handed ability to
shoot accurately over great distances allows him to become the
deadliest sniper in US military history – he is so highly regarded
that the men in his unit simply call him “Legend”.
Though the film is most
compelling when showing his activities in Iraq, the real thrust of
the story is how his experiences affect him personally, and how they
affect his relationship with his wife (Sienna Miller) and their kids.
Kyle goes back to Iraq for a total of four tours, and eventually is so
haunted by his experiences that his shell shock seems capable of
tearing him apart. How he deals with this, and how his family
supports him are the soul of the picture, but the Iraq scenes are the
meat on the bones.
A lot has been made of the
fact that the movie has a politically “conservative” outlook –
the war is never shown as anything but “just” and the Iraqis they
fight are very simple and straightforward villains. Repeatedly Kyle
refers to them as “savages”. However, I don't think that this
detracted form the movie at all because it was all told from the
point of view of the soldiers and their families, and that is how the HAVE TO view this type
of action. That there were no voices calling “what are we doing
there” is irrelevant to the film, as there would have been none of those voices present in these situations.
I also have to send out
some respect to Bradley Cooper for his turn as Chris Kyle. Over his
past few films he has proven himself to be much more than the
pretty-boy type he originally appeared to be, and this performance
continues on that trend. I battled myself a little in examining his
performance because he plays a somewhat unintelligent, war-mongering Texan (not my
personal favorite type of guy, cough-cough Bush) but in the final
analysis he is excellent in the role. Everyone in this film plays
well, but it is Cooper's performance that everything is based around
and dependent on.
I have issues with several
of this year's Oscar nominees, but not this one. It is moving, taut
and at many times edge-of-your-seat, and you are drawn into the story
and the characters. A worthy candidate for the big prize.
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