American Sniper
It’s only since October that we saw our last war movie, “Fury”, which was set in WW II, in one of those small moments of the war that might not have been literally true, but certainly seemed as though it could be true. Today’s war movie was American Sniper, set during the bloody period of the war in Iraq, during house-to-house, deadly fighting. The movie was directed by Clint Eastwood who makes full use of his unblinking, steel-eyed gaze on intense lives. I’ve seen a few commenters that labelled this as an exercise on flag-waving jingoism, but I thought it was anything BUT that. History tells us that wars are created by despots, kings and politicians, but soldiers do the fighting and civilians suffer most of the death and destruction. In this war, American soldiers are assigned to clean out opposition in a deadly part of Iraq. Snipers are part of the team, as they are also part of the enemy.
Into this shooting gallery comes Chris Kyle, a Texan, a rodeo cowboy and late-comer to the Navy Seals, who enlists after 9-11 with the impulse to protect his homeland. Kyle becomes a sniper, assigned to take up a rooftop post and protect the advance of his unit in unfriendly turf. Whether the was is justified and just why Kyle did what he did really is not part of the movie. Snipers have been used by every army in every war since the invention of fire arms. Even my local history recounts the two, obscure snipers, Wells and McComas who helped turn the tide of battle. One of them fired the shot that killed British General Ross, slowed the advance of the Brits during the battle of North Point and protecting Fort McHenry. The Star Spangled Banner celebrates those events and both of them have streets in Baltimore named after them. Another icon of his time was Sergeant York, a WW I soldier who rescued his unit from German machine-gunners with his marksmanship. He was an icon of WW I.
As with Fury, Sniper doesn’t waste much time explaining what Americans are doing in Iraq. Its focus is on the unit of soldiers and the fact that, like it or not, they have been deployed to Iraq and they have to kill or be killed. In the case of Kyle, the death that he brings isn’t about dropping a bomb from an airplane, operating a drone from a warehouse in Nevada or even about firing automatic weapons in the general direction of a hidden enemy. It’s about looking someone in the eye through a telescopic sight, deciding who is a threat and who will be killed and then watching them bleed out on the pavement….it’s a personal decision. In real life, Kyle was ruthlessly efficient at his job, having killed at least 170 people. What toll does this take on a person? Prior to his assignment, Kyle was in love, left a pregnant wife behind and promised to come back to a fairly normal American life in our relatively peaceful corner of the world. Can he come back? Can he ever lead a normal life after being the Angel of Death? Soldiers have wrestled with this for all of human history, some are OK, and some are physically and emotionally wrecked, even when they do survive. In the case of Kyle, he returns from the service to his waiting family, physically intact, but he has a hard time adjusting to civilian life, and is still on guard for something awful. He finds some peace helping veterans with worse problems, but the boredom of normality isn’t easy for him.
Was this a good movie? I’m giving it a 4 star rating. Bradley Cooper is nearly unrecognizable, having put on at least 40 pounds of muscle, fully inhabiting his role as a Texan, patriot and officially sanctioned assassin. The rest of the cast is serviceable, none are well known actors, but their roles are mainly confined to giving or following orders and engaging in action. Aside from Cooper, it’s not an actor’s movie or a movie where dialog counts for much. What it does have, however, is Eastwood’s patented direct, uncluttered, minimalist style that just won’t give you a break until it’s over. At every moment, even when Kyle is home on leave or out of the service, it always seems like something is about to happen. Eastwood won’t let us off the hook about the horror of the war, doesn’t resort to flag-waving, sloganeering patriotism and doesn’t really even address the politics or history of the war at all. This movie is about what happens when you DO decide to have a war. Summed up with perfect simplicity by General Grant, war is hell. Whether its an old war or a new war, it’s hell, and when weapons and locations change, it’s still hell.
