Interesting review here:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2015/01/new-film-american-sniper
CHRIS KYLE is officially “the most lethal sniper in US history”, having killed 160 people while serving as a Navy SEAL in Iraq. With a CV like that, it’s understandable that someone should have made a film about him. But the question must be asked: does the statistic make Kyle an interesting person with an interesting story? Is he more worthy of a biopic than, say, a sniper who killed 100 people, or 50, or five? If “American Sniper” is anything to go by, the answer is no. But that may say more about the film-maker, Clint Eastwood.
Nearly a decade ago, Mr Eastwood’s “Flags Of Our Fathers” questioned the lionising of American military heroes. But his new film, with a screenplay by Jason Hall adapted from Kyle’s autobiography, is a more straightforward enterprise. It’s a respectful biopic with nail-biting moments, but it seems ploddingly workmanlike in comparison with the film it most resembles, “The Hurt Locker”.
Initially, it promises to stand out from its predecessors. In an early scene, we see Kyle as a boy in Texas, being taught by his father that the world is divided into sheep, wolves and sheepdogs. Sheepdogs are those who have been given “the gift of aggression”—not a phrase you would hear in many Hollywood biopics. When we meet Kyle again as an adult (powerfully played by Bradley Cooper), he has taken his father’s lessons to heart. While working as a rodeo rider in 1998, he learns of the American embassy bombings and immediately volunteers for the SEALs. America is “the greatest country on Earth, and I’ll do whatever I can to protect it,” he tells the recruiting officer. Besides, he likes to fight. Soon, he is lying on rooftops in Iraq, picking off insurgents, and earning the nickname “Legend”.
In these scenes, Kyle is established as being far more gung-ho and right-wing than the typical big-screen soldier. He is remorselessly violent and unquestioningly patriotic. In most Hollywood films, he would be the villain, not the hero. But before long, “American Sniper” backs away from that portrayal, and settles into a rut that has been dug by countless previous war movies. Once again, there are the sado-masochistic training sequences and the echoing shouts of “Hoo-rah!” There is Kyle’s loyal-but-nagging wife (Sienna Miller), who has to deliver a variation on the same tired speech every time her husband is home: “Even when you’re here, you’re not here…I need you to be human again.” There is the comrade-in-arms who tells Kyle that he has just got engaged—a sure sign that he is going to be fatally wounded seconds later. And there is Kyle himself. He is a committed soldier, but he is also troubled by what his job entails, and he is happy to leave Iraq and return to the bosom of his family. In other words, he is a conventional war-movie hero.
A quick flick through Kyle’s best-selling autobiography is enough to demonstrate how much stronger and stranger the film might have been. “I loved what I did,” he writes in its introduction. “I’m not lying or exaggerating to say it was fun. I had the time of my life being a SEAL.” When he is with his wife and children, he confesses, he wanted to be back in Iraq: “I missed the excitement and the thrill. I loved killing bad guys.” And he recounts those killings with jaw-dropping callousness. Once, he recalls, he fired on two suspected insurgents on a moped. “It was like a scene from ‘Dumb and Dumber’. The bullet went through the first guy and into the second…Two guys with one shot. The taxpayer got good bang for his buck on that one.” He also admits that “there was a bit of a competition between myself and some of the other snipers” to see who could dispatch the most Iraqis. “If you’re interested,” he adds, “the confirmed kills were only kills that someone else witnessed, and cases where the enemy could be confirmed dead. So if I shot someone in the stomach and he managed to crawl around where we couldn’t see him before he bled out, he didn’t count.” So now you know.
Depending on your perspective, Kyle was either a dedicated, level-headed warrior, or he was a sociopathic monster. Either way, his autobiography contains a rarely spoken truth: that some people really, really like to go to war. It’s a truth that is fudged in the film. The onscreen Kyle states that it is his duty to kill Iraqis, but he doesn’t enjoy it, and the strain on Mr Cooper’s face never lets us forget his pain and doubt. Moreover, the big-screen Kyle is embarrassed by any mention of his record-breaking body-count, and he certainly isn’t in “competition” with his peers. Presumably, the film-makers wanted their Kyle to be more rounded and sympathetic than the one in the autobiography, but they have done the real man—and themselves—a disservice by smoothing off the very edges that made him so fascinating. A film about a natural born killer might have been uncomfortable viewing, but it would also have been daring and revelatory. Instead, Mr Eastwood gives us an “American Sniper” that’s firing blanks.