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. 

Review: Jersey Boys

by Trevor Kirkendall

★★½

“Jersey Boys” is a musical depicting the rise of the 1960s rock group The Four Seasons. It is an adaptation of the 2006 Tony Award winning Broadway musical of the same name. The stage musical is described as a documentary style presentation. The film is done in largely the same manner with many of the characters breaking the fourth wall to talk to the audience about the events happening or about to happen.

We start with Tommy DeVito (Vincent Piazza), a guitar player and singer who also has some deep ties to a New Jersey mob family lead by Gyp DeCarlo (Christopher Walken). He’s also pals with a kid named Frankie Castelluccio (John Lloyd Young) and recognizes that he has a very unique and promising singing voice. He’s already got a vocal group going with Nick Massi (Michael Lomenda) and eventually Frankie comes in as the lead singer and assumes an easier to pronounce name: Frankie Valli.

But venues don’t want to book trios, so they need to find a fourth member. They happen upon a songwriter named Bob Gaudio (Erich Bergen). Frankie loves the guy right away, but Tommy isn’t so sure. They eventually come to terms and the group is formed. They get some work doing backup studio vocals for producer Bob Crewe (Mike Doyle). He doesn’t think they have anything unique on their own until they bring him a song called “Sherry.”  Then one called “Big Girls Don’t Cry.” And another called “Walk Like a Man.” But of course, fame has its way of ruining successful bands, and The Four Seasons are no exception.

“Jersey Boys” depicts much of the turmoil within the band after they begin selling millions of records but also how Frankie Valli was able to keep some of his own personal integrity in tact. Director Clint Eastwood has an exceptional grasp on this story and what all four of these characters are going through. There’s genuine change in each character in this film. No one is vilified to the point where you have to despise one in order to like another. Eastwood could easily have gone this route, but instead puts forth a film that makes each character sympathetic in his own way.

However, Eastwood does get a little too carried away trying to add too many different layers to these characters. “Jersey Boys” starts out slow with and takes its time setting everything up. The first act break is not discernable at all. My guess is it comes about 45-50 minutes into the film (usually it’s about 20, no more than 30). This makes for a long and dry act of setup. The act breaks here are different than that of the original source material, of course, since it’s a three-act film rather than a two-act musical theater production.

The screenplay was adapted by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, the writers of the musical’s book, but have stumbled bringing their story into the world of film. They’ve written the script to include not only their original storyline, but to include many more elements that aren’t easy to depict on stage. They probably should have just filmed the musical book instead and hoped it worked. I’m surprised Eastwood didn’t do that since he has a habit of filming the first draft of scripts rather than waiting on endless rewrites.

Vincent Piazza is great in his role as Tommy DeVito. He serves as our first narrator in the film and conveys many different emotions. He displays a lot of determination to see his band succeed, and that’s a pretty typical archetype in stories such as this. And yet he never feels derivative. The movie ultimately belongs to John Lloyd Young, who originated the role of Frankie on Broadway (and won a Tony for the role too). He has a commanding presence on the screen and can really sing the songs like Frankie himself. I can only imagine what it must have been like to see this man play this role live on Broadway.

“Jersey Boys” has all the makings of great film, but it just gets too lost in its own story to ever become the gripping movie it should have been. It has the look and feel of all the great Eastwood movies. Eastwood and his longtime cinematographer Tom Stern have a beautiful gritty look in this film that is distinctly theirs (very similar to the looks they achieved with “Million Dollar Baby” which is still Eastwood’s best movie by far). But the beauty of the film and the razor sharp acting and vocal performances cannot salvage the fact that “Jersey Boys” runs way too long. It is probably much more suited for a live theatrical performance rather than a silver screen presentation.