Clint Eastwood puts a soldier in Iraq for his latest cinematic effort
AMERICAN SNIPER
DIRECTOR: Clint Eastwood
CAST: Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller
CLASSIFICATION: 16 LV
RUNNING TIME: 132 minutes
RATING: ***
JINGOISTIC and very insular, American Sniper may also just be a clever war movie. There are a whole lot of clichés and stereotypes clunking about the screen of “the heroic but modest soldier”, the family back home (thank heavens there is no white picket fence) and “the price soldiers pay”.
Yet, on a meta level, maybe there is something deeper going on. Director Clint Eastwood gives us a story of a simple guy who wanted to be a cowboy and decided to go off and kill him some vermin who were attacking his country.
While many critics are asking “but where is the story’s context in the bigger picture?” or “how come you don’t show his victims as human?” or “why such a badly stereotypical bad guy?” – this is not a movie about what America was really doing in Iraq or how the Iraqi people felt about their homes and lives being destroyed. This is about how a soldier trained to do a job.
And, the message seems to be on one level – it’s not about being given all the necessary info, it is about obstinately and deeply believing in the rightness of your cause because, goddammit, you’re American and that is all you need to know.
Eastwood takes liberties with the true story of sniper Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper, pictured), smoothing out or ignoring all sorts of sordid details of his real life as well as glossing over his tragic death at the hands of someone he was trying to help.
We are taken with him through SEAL bootcamp and then on to four different tours of Iraq, through various cities as he snipes him some targets.
Cooper bulked up and switched off the charm for this role – he makes of Chris a disconnected and increasingly disoriented character. Surprisingly one-dimensional for an actor of his calibre.
Sienna Miller, though, is surprisingly nuanced as the put-upon wife left to hold down the fort, but Kyle’s family back home are, again, mere clichés.
What we never come to understand is why Kyle is the way he is, other than maybe that he is brainwashed by the church and his father. Or at least that seems to be a possible suggestion from the opening sequences.
Quite a lot of the dialogue is of the trite “hurrah” variety, when it is not cribbed from a Hallmark greeting card. On a technical level though, this is some primo stuff – the focused cinematography, the well-filmed fight sequences shot with handheld and fixed cameras plus the hyper-real set and art design. The craftmanship is top-notch.
Yet, very few of the scenes truly evoke the sort of tension you experience when watching Hurt Locker or Enemy at the Gate.
Many of the scenes play out like role- playing video games, with soldiers sweeping through alleyways, guns ready to blow the enemy away, so the film will appeal to that audience who just want to see buff guys with guns shoot things – and yes, there are many people who do not want context and angst and handwringing.
It is simply oozing American patriotism out of every scene. If it isn’t literally flag-waving, it is people praising Kyle’s actions with honest tears or sincerely telling him to go out there and kill people.
And that, is the truly scary part that makes it such a good movie to someone who isn’t American: how this patriotism sweeps up everyone to put this man in a position where it is okay to kill people and he is praised for doing it. People are even loving the movie to the point where they are getting angry and calling their fellow Americans unpatriotic for dissing it.
Yet, stories of real snipers who say “this was not my experience” are also getting space in the media, which may not have gotten noticed if not for this movie.
If you liked Taken or Fury, you will like this.