Just when you think Clint Eastwood, 84, may have lost a step as a director, along comes “American Sniper.”
And just when you cannot imagine Bradley Cooper transforming himself into a Texas ranch hand and broncobuster turned U.S. Navy SEAL, along comes “American Sniper.” The extra 40 pounds of muscle certainly help.
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller.
Rating: R for strong and disturbing war violence, and language throughout including some sexual references.
“American Sniper” is the true-life story of Chris Kyle who, from 1999 to 2009, recorded the most career sniper kills in U.S. military history. The Pentagon has confirmed about 160 but wouldn’t provide an exact figure for the autobiography Mr. Kyle wrote with Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice that is the basis for the movie penned by Jason Hall.
Mr. Kyle served four tours of duty in Iraq and saw his job as simple at its core — to kill before you are killed.
“You do it again. And again. You do it so the enemy won’t kill you or your countrymen. You do it until there’s no one left for you to kill. That’s what war is,” he said.
Chris sees the enemy as “savages,” a term used in his memoir and on screen. He said he was fighting “savage, despicable evil.”
“American Sniper” opens with the sort of split-second decision Mr. Kyle had to make from his rooftop perch — to allow a woman and a child to walk undisturbed below or to act on a suspicion that the woman was concealing a grenade — and spins back through his childhood and early adulthood.
It eventually cuts between the battlefront and the homefront where Chris’ wife, Taya (a brunette Sienna Miller), is going through the milestones of her pregnancy alone and sometimes while accidentally hearing earsplitting violence on the other end of the phone.
When Chris goes home between combat deployments, he is struck by the disconnect between over here and over there.
“There’s a war goin’ on and we’re headed to the mall,” he says, with exasperation and disbelief.
But for most of the movie he heads back to Iraq and the movie forgoes years as identifiers (which would have been helpful) and simply notes the passage of time with Tour 2 or Tour 3 or Tour 4 on screen. It also largely leaves hanging the story of his younger brother, now a retired Marine.
The danger, whether represented by a bounty put on Chris’ head or a close cache of weapons, is always there as is the sentiment that the military men are “protecting more than this dirt” in Iraq so they can keep American cities safe.
But at what personal price, as Taya tells her husband, “If you think this war isn’t changing you, you’re wrong. You can only circle the flames so long.”
Mr. Eastwood, no stranger to military movies as an actor or director, doesn’t engage in hand-wringing or thorny, lengthy debates about the war. Some critics have suggested the well-known Republican is doing more than telling a story but the director told The Hollywood Reporter at a public Q&A session that, “Contrary to public opinion, I abhor violence.” He also said he had questions about going to war in Afghanistan and was against the war in Iraq.
Here, he has made a straightforward film of a man who lived by the code of “God, country, family” and reached the point where he needed to spend time in that country and with that family.
But Chris Kyle’s life took a tragic, ironic turn in 2013 and the ending is powerful, driving home the real-life nature of the story. “American Sniper” doesn’t ask questions raised by documentaries such as “Fahrenheit 9/11” or movies such as “In the Valley of Elah” or “Stop-Loss,” but it does right by Mr. Kyle, his family, remarkable skill, service and certainly courage under fire.
In IMAX in select locations.
Movie editor Barbara Vancheri: bvancheri@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1632.
First Published: January 16, 2015, 5:00 a.m.
