Certificate: 15 Running Time: 132 mins Action/Biography/Drama | Directed by: Clint Eastwood Written by: Jason Hall Starring: Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller |
Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper is a quite staggering film, in that it a creation completely devoid of irony and self-awareness. It is a picture every bit as blunt as its subject, the self-proclaimed ‘Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History’, Chris Kyle, played here by Bradley Cooper.
The movie focuses on Kyle’s life, from his ultra-conservative Texas upbringing, to his enlisting as a marine, and his military career thereafter. From the outset, it was difficult for me to empathise with Kyle’s character in almost any way, although Cooper does a serviceable job of portraying him. The problem isn’t with Cooper’s performance, more that the script and direction of the film offers no room for nuance or ambiguity – everything is black and white, and the audience is shepherded towards what Eastwood deems to be ‘right’ and what he thinks is ‘wrong’. Whether this is because the film is an accurate portrayal of the man himself and his background is debatable, but it makes the picture much less interesting as a result.
What we are left with instead is a bog-standard action film in much the same vein as Lone Survivor or Taken. It is hard to take a film’s portrayal of war seriously when there are slow motion shots following a bullet along its flight path. The scenes in Iraq are perfectly adequate in terms of cinematography, but because the family scenes interspersed with this action feel so stilted and unrealistic, it is difficult to care whether or not anybody lives or dies. Any character that doesn’t blindly follow military doctrine is instantly cut down, but rather than explore these themes you get the sense that Eastwood just want to celebrate the man himself.
This would be fine, if it didn’t so happen that Kyle was a real person, who killed real people, in a conflict that claimed thousands of innocent and non-innocent lives on both sides. American Sniper lacks the emotional intelligence to deal with questions about modern warfare that it throws up, but then frustratingly swats away without proper exploration. In particular, the Al-Qaeda enemy sniper feels like a very cartoonish and needless addition, as though an audience couldn’t be trusted to focus on an entire movie without a recognisable bad guy. Similarly, towards the end of the film Eastwood threatens to make a comment on PTSD and its effects on returning soldiers, but the film is not mature enough to do so and the situation is quickly resolved without any lasting impression.
Personally, I feel that American Sniper is a movie that doesn’t know what it wants to be. As a biopic, it falls flat because none of the characters involved are that interesting, or at least not in the one-dimensional bloody-minded way they are presented here. As a war film, it fails because it shows almost no desire to engage with the complexity of a soldier’s role on the battlefield, and the emotional toll that warfare takes is only offered a cursory glance. You feel uneasy watching it as an action film knowing that events are real. I understand that Kyle’s death during filming would have had an immense impact on the structure of the film, but that does not alter the fact that it is misshapen.
It is a shame, because so far the Iraq/Afghanistan conflict does not yet have a defining film in the mould of Apocalypse Now or The Thin Red Line. I am sure that one is coming soon, but unfortunately in this regard, American Sniper misses its target.
The movie focuses on Kyle’s life, from his ultra-conservative Texas upbringing, to his enlisting as a marine, and his military career thereafter. From the outset, it was difficult for me to empathise with Kyle’s character in almost any way, although Cooper does a serviceable job of portraying him. The problem isn’t with Cooper’s performance, more that the script and direction of the film offers no room for nuance or ambiguity – everything is black and white, and the audience is shepherded towards what Eastwood deems to be ‘right’ and what he thinks is ‘wrong’. Whether this is because the film is an accurate portrayal of the man himself and his background is debatable, but it makes the picture much less interesting as a result.
What we are left with instead is a bog-standard action film in much the same vein as Lone Survivor or Taken. It is hard to take a film’s portrayal of war seriously when there are slow motion shots following a bullet along its flight path. The scenes in Iraq are perfectly adequate in terms of cinematography, but because the family scenes interspersed with this action feel so stilted and unrealistic, it is difficult to care whether or not anybody lives or dies. Any character that doesn’t blindly follow military doctrine is instantly cut down, but rather than explore these themes you get the sense that Eastwood just want to celebrate the man himself.
This would be fine, if it didn’t so happen that Kyle was a real person, who killed real people, in a conflict that claimed thousands of innocent and non-innocent lives on both sides. American Sniper lacks the emotional intelligence to deal with questions about modern warfare that it throws up, but then frustratingly swats away without proper exploration. In particular, the Al-Qaeda enemy sniper feels like a very cartoonish and needless addition, as though an audience couldn’t be trusted to focus on an entire movie without a recognisable bad guy. Similarly, towards the end of the film Eastwood threatens to make a comment on PTSD and its effects on returning soldiers, but the film is not mature enough to do so and the situation is quickly resolved without any lasting impression.
Personally, I feel that American Sniper is a movie that doesn’t know what it wants to be. As a biopic, it falls flat because none of the characters involved are that interesting, or at least not in the one-dimensional bloody-minded way they are presented here. As a war film, it fails because it shows almost no desire to engage with the complexity of a soldier’s role on the battlefield, and the emotional toll that warfare takes is only offered a cursory glance. You feel uneasy watching it as an action film knowing that events are real. I understand that Kyle’s death during filming would have had an immense impact on the structure of the film, but that does not alter the fact that it is misshapen.
It is a shame, because so far the Iraq/Afghanistan conflict does not yet have a defining film in the mould of Apocalypse Now or The Thin Red Line. I am sure that one is coming soon, but unfortunately in this regard, American Sniper misses its target.