Review: American Sniper

by Trevor Kirkendall

★★★

“American Sniper” is a moving film that pays tribute to one of the finest soldiers the United States military has ever had. Director Clint Eastwood has delicately handled the story and has assured that Chris Kyle’s name and story are portrayed with dignity without any kind of ulterior motive. There’s no pro-war/anti-war message being delivered here, which is fairly uncommon for a Hollywood studio picture these days. Instead, we’re given a story just about a man and how his line of work has impacted his professional and personal life. It just so happens that this man’s job is that of a deadly Navy SEAL sniper.

Much like “Saving Private Ryan,” “American Sniper” focuses more on the people and not the war. Much like “The Hurt Locker,” it focuses on the side effects that fighting in a war against foreign extremists has on the people involved. But unlike those films, “American Sniper” isn’t a profound and thought provoking masterwork. It’s certainly great – don’t get me wrong – but it lacks that familiar quality that usually accompanies powerful war dramas.

What we have here is a story that simply sets its sights on Navy SEAL Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper), a native of Texas who has been labeled as the most lethal sniper in the history of the United States Military. The film is told to us with a little bit of flashback that shows how he was raised, how he came to be in the Navy and how he met his future wife Taya (Sienna Miller). Eastwood wastes no time getting us up to speed on the backstory before we’re dropped right into action in Fallujah.

From there, the story shows us each of Kyle’s tours of duty in the Iraqi warzones. After each tour, Kyle comes home and must adjust to life on the home front. Each break in action adds to his displeasure of being away from where he sees himself most effective, and each trip home shows an increase in levels of PTSD. Kyle feels most useful with his brothers when he’s overseas in country. There, Eastwood directs the story’s focus not to the numerous kills Kyle had, but instead on a counterpart to Kyle fighting in the insurgency. A lethal Syrian sniper named Mustafa (Sammy Shiek). Mustafa was also an Olympian in the rifle events and is just about as good with a sniper rifle as Kyle. This gives both Kyle and the film a common antagonist with a face and name; someone for us to root against in a film with numerous, faceless enemies.

Overall, “American Sniper” offers no real surprises and doesn’t venture into any groundbreaking territory. It is an enjoyable movie, but like I said before, it lacks a certain emotional connection that’s evident in so many other war films. The script by Jason Hall (“Paranoia”) paints Kyle in a very likeable light. He’s easily identifiable. Cooper plays him to be the usual good old Texas boy. As an audience, it’s easy to watch him and root for him. But if you’re up on your current events, you will most likely know where this is headed. Hall is counting on this because he’s thrown in dialogue and moments that come across as a bit ironic. It’s kind of a cheap ploy from a writer, in my opinion, to do this, but it’s so common place in movies about real people that it’s become acceptable practice.

Other than that, Hall’s script has built in many moments that are genuinely intense. Again, Kyle’s fate already known to the audience leaves some of these sequences a little less thrilling than they probably could have been. The folks we should be concerned with are the minor characters who surround Kyle in every scene, but they’re never that well developed so there’s very little rooting interest in them, save for a couple who are a bit more instrumental to the story. Elsewhere, Eastwood disorients the audience by making some of the battle sequences a bit hard to watch. Not because they’re too intense, but because they’re filmed at night or in sand storms. It’s difficult to tell who’s who and what’s going on.

Cooper shines in the role and continues to impress with every new film he’s done each year. He puts on a remarkable and soulful performance as Kyle. He makes Kyle into a national hero, a real life Captain America, if you will. As a producer on this film as well, Cooper has made sure to play the role in an honorable fashion so that we can all identify with Kyle. Knowing his fate makes him even more empathetic. The irony might be built into the script, but Cooper doesn’t play into any of that.

“American Sniper” is very good, but it’s not the best work we’ve seen from Eastwood. Eastwood has been very prolific in the latter years of his career. At a time when most directors might just retire and live out the remainder of their lives enjoying their vast fortunes, Eastwood continues to find great stories worth telling. They’re not all home runs, but they’re almost always enjoyable. I have high expectations of Eastwood because of this and maybe expected more out of him, but I can’t knock this one too much. It is moving and it is good, but it’s far from a wartime masterpiece.