Inherently patriotic and troubled soldier

AMERICAN SNIPER (2014)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

The sniper sets his sights on an Iraqi woman and a young boy, perhaps her son. She hands him a grenade. The sniper shoots her dead first. The boy runs towards the American soldiers. He is killed. But before such a startlingly intense and sweat-inducing scene is completed (and your hands will turn clammy), we see the sniper as a young boy trained to hunt deer seguing to his later years as a rodeo cowboy. His girlfriend cheats on him. He signs up to be a Marine, becomes a trained SEAL and marries a woman who swore she would never marry a SEAL. 9/11 occurs and Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper, simply magnificent without being showy) goes to fight and we come back to the grisly scene that starts the picture.

"American Sniper" unfolds with uncommon clarity and narrow, sharp focus, much like the main character's titular job. Based on a 2012 memoir "American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History" by Chris Kyle (who was killed by a veteran he tried to help), the movie unfolds at a brisk pace yet it is also unhurried, snapping with precise, artfully rendered scenes of war in four different tours of duty and the homefront where PTSD clearly settles in, almost like an emotional unraveling of suppressed emotions. Kyle's wife, Taya (Sienna Miller) has two children and is pretty much on her own to raise them while he feels he has to "protect his country" and continue to become a "legend." His purpose is patriotic, at the expense of his own family. Only Kyle sees that war is not just hell, it is downright nasty and dirty and unbecoming. He feels he has to complete his duty and kill the savages that have taken the lives of his fellow soldiers. It dawns on him that this war may not cost him an amputation or death, but it is amputating his spirit.

Clint Eastwood is a legend in his own right as well, crafting one of the finest films of his career. I would not call "American Sniper" the "Unforgiven" of war movies but it is hardly a propagandistic war movie (as some critics have alleged and, yes, I am talking to you Matt Taibbi) where we raise our American flags and salute the one-dimensional hero and cheer for the murdered enemies. Bradley Cooper, an actor I am slowly discovering to be a solid gifted actor, and director Eastwood are interested in three dimensions - war is not presented as just and fair in this movie, it is presented as cruel and sadistic. I would not call "American Sniper" one of the great war films but it is one of the great character studies of war itself, that is the strategy, the plan of attack, the kills, all in unifying formation. Only Chris saw the inherent flaws in that this particular war is unpredictable, and it affects him far more deeply than he may have thought. The other battlefront, unfortunately for him, is home.