I saw the film last night with a few friends. At first, I'd planned to write this post upon arriving back home. However, the film required a bit more processing than that. And so, here I am, twenty-four hours later, finally ready to talk about what I saw. And, though this goes without saying, spoiler alert.
American Sniper chronicles the life of Chris Kyle, one of the most lethal snipers in world history. Kyle, a Texan, joined the Navy in 1999 and became a SEAL. An expert marksman, he often acted as a sniper, providing cover on missions. All told, he served four tours of duty in Iraq and racked up at 160 confirmed kills. Upon leaving the Navy, he ran a training company for law enforcement and wrote two books on his experiences before his death in 2013 (more on that later). In the film, Kyle is portrayed by a nearly-unrecognizeable Bradley Cooper. Cooper gained forty pounds for the role, of course. But that isn't what puts this performance in a league of its own. The laid-back funnyman I've grown accustomed to seeing Cooper play is long gone. His mannerisms, his facial expressions, even his hairstyle...everything is completely different. Cooper's Texan drawl is spot-on - noticeable, but not forced. There's an unmistakeable tensity throughout the film, just from the way Cooper plays Kyle. The character changes drastically after his first experience in combat, and seems to exhibit symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He is distant from his family, with that thousand-yard stare, and is prone to fits of anger - in one harrowing scene, he whips his dog for playing too roughly with his son. It's also implied that he associates certain everyday sounds with the war, another symptom of PTSD.
The film does an excellent job of keeping true to Kyle's story, as I understand it. Some parts are embellished, of course, for the sake of the film. Having never read Kyle's autobiography, I can't say for certain which scenes deviate from his description of the events, but I assume that the total is greater than those I'm listing here. Director Clint Eastwood and writer Jason Hall did deviate for the sake of action, or for the sake of depth. To get the classic "good guy, bad guy" element going in the film, the writers created a rivalry between Kyle and an insurgent sniper. At the climax of the film, Kyle kills this sniper with a 2100-yard shot. This isn't what happened in real life, to my understanding - Kyle didn't kill a rival sniper who'd killed some of his friends with a 2100-yard shot. He did, however, take out an insurgent armed with a rocket-propelled-grenade (in layman's terms, a bazooka) from such a distance. And in spite of this rivalry, the film draws interesting parallels between Kyle and the insurgent sniper - they are both fathers, they both have wives, and they are both fighting for their homes and their countrymen. From interviews I've seen featuring the real Chris Kyle, I would venture a guess that Cooper played his PTSD symptoms up a bit for the sake of the film. I may be wrong - Kyle may have put on a brave face for the cameras. And the transition from military life to civilian life certainly took a toll on him - he attested to that in multiple interviews. But on camera, he seemed perfectly at ease with his situation - cool as you please and laid back.
Since this is a film relating to the war in Iraq and directed by Clint Eastwood, you would expect it to either condemn or justify the actions our country undertook in Iraq. But if that's what you're searching for in this film, you'll be sorely disappointed. Sniper neither condones nor condemns the war, in that it does both to roughly the same extent. The psychological toll the war takes on Kyle and other veterans is the central theme in the film. In several extremely intense scenes, Kyle has women and small children in his crosshairs (that's all you're getting out of me), and these instances clearly shake him. Many of Kyle's good friends from the SEALs are lost in combat in violent fashion - some of them grow disillusioned with the cause altogether. You hear all that, and you'd expect it to be an anti-war flick, right? Well, that's because I haven't mentioned one scene where an Iraqi father and son are tortured and killed with an unconventional weapon, and another where the bloody, mutilated corpses of American soldiers are strung up like butchered animal carcasses, and another where a seemingly hospitable man turns out to be a heavily-armed insurgent. When Bradley's Kyle calls his foes "savages," you don't disagree with him. There are definitely partisan undertones in the film, though. Cooper's Kyle comes across as a stereotypical nationalist-patriot. The film's version of Kyle is definitely a lot more reserved in this respect. The real Chris Kyle was unabashedly conservative with an aversion to political correctness who may or may not have punched out former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura at some point. He had no qualms about killing insurgents, who he viewed as savages. But Cooper and Eastwood brought that point across in the film as well: both Kyles regretted the American lives they couldn't save more than they regretted the enemy lives they took. Some of the other SEALs provide a more liberal view on the conflict, as does Kyle's wife, Taya. Granted, their "partisan" views are motivated by the fact that they want the war, which has an enormous impact on their immediate lives, to come to an end rather than by politics, but the message still gets across.
It's history, so this isn't really a spoiler: Chris Kyle and another veteran were killed on February 2, 2013, by an ex-marine with severe PTSD they were trying to help counsel. Eastwood and Cooper showed a scene of a recovered Kyle to add to the meaning of what had happened. The film ended with actual footage and photographs from Kyle's memorial service at AT&T Stadium (home of the Dallas Cowboys) in Arlington, Texas, the funeral procession from Midlothian to Texas State Cemetery in Austin, and the burial itself. I don't often cry during films. And by "I don't usually," I mean "I hardly ever." My eyes have been bone dry for the vast majority of pictures I've seen. The ending of Return of the King got me the first time around, and It's A Wonderful Life tends to hit close to home, but aside from that, very little. But I did tear up at the end. The way the final scene with the actors was structured emphasized the cruel irony of Chris Kyle's death - after he survived combat and rebuilt his relationship with his family, he was gunned down by a man he was trying to help. And perhaps the best indicator of the ending's power lies in the audience's reaction. When the screen went dark and the credits started scrolling, every single person in that theater walked out in complete silence.
American Sniper may not be the best film I've ever seen. But it is, beyond all doubt, the greatest film I've ever seen in theaters in my seventeen years. I'd recommend it for anyone with a strong enough stomach - some of the images are pretty graphic. It's a gritty, no-holds-barred, brutally honest film that showcases the arguments for and against the conflict in the Middle East while focusing on the life of a very human soldier. It was definitely worth the money for the ticket, and it definitely deserved those six Oscar nominations. Go check it out when you have the time.
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