American Sniper (***½)
Directed by: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Sienna
Miller, Max Charles, Luke Grimes, Kyle Gallner, Sam Jaeger, Jake McDorman, Cory
Hardrict, Navid Negahban, Sammy Sheik, Mido Hamada
Seen: February 23rd 2015
***½ Out of ****
American Sniper is an engaging telling
of the true story of the military life of Chris Kyle, known as the most lethal
sniper in US Military history. It follows Kyle’s life from just before
enlisting for SEAL training in 1999, through four tours of the Middle East up
to 2009, up to his tragic and untimely death, at the age of 38, at the hands of
a veteran suffering from PTSD in February 2013. It’s a larger than life story
of a man who managed more in his short life than many do in twice as long.
Clint Eastwood deftly directs a war movie that drags the viewer into the action
and the drama, as the story not only focusses of Kyle’s exploits in Iraq, but even
more so on the impact it had on his home life as he was institutionalised to
war, and it took a major catharsis for him to move on to normal life again. While
events in the movie are modified from what they were in real life, Chris Kyle’s
wife walked away from the movie in awe, thinking that it was like watching her
husband in many, many ways…
American Sniper begins with a young
boy hunting with his father. After this opening Chris Kyle (Cooper) is shown as
a young man of about 24, now a rodeo cowboy. He heads home with his brother and
finds his girlfriend in bed with another man. While chasing them away he sees
the aftermath of the 1998 US Embassy bombings on television and decides to
enlist in the Navy, eventually becoming a SEAL sniper. Before his first tour in
Iraq, right after the September 11th attacks, he meets Taya Renae (Miller)
in a bar, and they get married. On his first tour he starts growing in infamy,
on both sides of the war, with the al-Qaeda insurgents issuing a bounty for his
life. When he returns home it is to some trouble as he is distracted by memories
of the war and it starts to intrude upon his marriage. The movie goes on to
show Kyle’s many heroic feats in Iraq interspersed with difficulty back home as
he finds it increasingly difficult to relate to his wife. Every tour drives a
bit more of a wedge between Kyle and Taya, with only the aforementioned
catharsis during his fourth tour proving enough to finally get him to uproot
from the Middle East and head home for good. Back home his life returns to
normal and he even starts having great impact among local veterans suffering
with reintegration after war, but only until that horrible day in February
2013.
Bradley Cooper plays Chris Kyle in
what is up to now probably the role of his lifetime. He becomes Chris Kyle,
completely unrecognisable from characters he has thus far portrayed. Gone is
the overconfident Phil from the Hangover movies, the charming Will Tippin from
Alias, or even Faceman from the 2010 A-Team movie; here Cooper becomes someone
else, completely shedding his own persona and likeness – he is absolutely brilliant.
American Sniper is both a great war drama
and a very good war thriller. Clint Eastwood understands storytelling and it is
only a few members of the general public who will not find this movie both entertaining
and moving. The combat depicted is visceral and tense, Taya’s heartbreak is
genuine, and Kyle’s confusion with his emotions and refusal to properly deal
with it is very real. American Sniper is a very good and very memorable war
movie honouring an American hero that was taken way before his time.
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