Review: American Sniper
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
The adjustment from battlefield to homefront is impossibly daunting to navigate.
City Paper grade: C
Especially in the wake of his unforgettable appearance at the 2012 Republican National Convention, it's near impossible to approach a Clint Eastwood movie about the Iraq war without the Hollywood icon's politics in mind. But Eastwood the filmmaker has never been one to argue with empty chairs, and in its own narrowly focused way, American Sniper is the latest in a long line of films in which Eastwood has wrestled with the reality of good but violent men. A bulked-up Bradley Cooper stars as real-life Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, who chalked up the most confirmed kills of any sniper in U.S. history during four tours of Iraq. Whether saving his kid brother from schoolyard bullies or enlisting in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Kyle is depicted as having a protective instinct, drilled into him by his no-nonsense father.
Through most of the war, his absolute God-and-country confidence feels alien to a war that in reality has offered little in the way of moral certainty. Whether or not Eastwood shares that confidence, he offers little in the tense battle scenes to contradict it; even when Kyle trains his sights on women and children, there's no ambiguity as to who are the bad guys in this picture. The director's interest isn't in questioning the war effort, but in exploring its effect on the men tasked with carrying it out. The film splits its focus between Kyle's experiences in Iraq and his increasing alienation at home, where PTSD takes its toll on his health and his family.
For all its valorization of the troops — and make no mistake, the film's depiction of the efficiency and camaraderie of soldiers is as nuance-free as a John Wayne flag-raiser, despite some of Kyle's more inflammatory statements — American Sniper finds the adjustment from battlefield to home front impossibly daunting to navigate. Eastwood himself shares the same difficulty; while many of the battle sequences, particularly a vivid, almost abstract, attack during a sandstorm, are among the director's best work in years, the repetitive and trite scenes between Cooper and Sienna Miller as Kyle's wife quickly grow tiresome, as if Clint is as eager as his subject to get back to the action.
