War movies are easy to make entertaining and emotional, they’re hard to make great and memorable for the ages. We haven’t had that seminal war film for our age that covers the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Hurt Locker comes the closest. American Sniper will occupy a close second from now on. That doesn’t say as much about American Sniper as it does about the other films about these wars. I’m not sure if that’s because we don’t have the benefit of time and hindsight just yet or if filmmakers are going about things too literally and trying to maintain gritty realism. Whatever it is, we just haven’t had that film that defines the generation in terms of the wars. I’ll just list my favorite war films to let you know my taste: the four Vietnam films, Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, Platoon, and Full Metal Jacket are always near the top; the Russian film Come and See and The Battle of Algiers might beat them all, and Saving Private Ryan of course is nearly beyond any criticism; others I like are Paths of Glory, MASH, The Big Red One and The Thin Red Line. Taking two of those Apocalypse Now is an adaptation of the book ‘The Heart of Darkness’ that just uses the Vietnam setting to tell the story, and MASH uses the Korean War backdrop to look at the then current Vietnam conflict. It is those unique perspectives that make them great.
I think why The Hurt Locker and American Sniper are partially successful though is because they focus on a specialist in the wars, a bomb expert and a sniper. It puts the audience in a unique perspective as well. The best shots of American Sniper were when we peered down the scope of the rifle or when we viewed the battleground from the camera lens of a drone, unfortunately those moments were just too fleeting. I would’ve loved to see a multi-minute shot just looking through the scope to give us exactly what Navy Seal Chris Kyle was seeing. I also liked when we looked back through the scope and saw his eye enlarged by the lens. Despite this minor quibble I will say the best compliment I can about this film: I couldn’t imagine anyone else directing it besides Clint Eastwood and I couldn’t imagine anyone else starring besides Bradley Cooper.
Cooper is massive, both physically and as a leading presence on the battlefield. He is always in control when in country fighting a war he actually seems to enjoy, or at least able to tolerate better than the other soldiers. And this is shown best by how uncomfortable he is during the scenes back home between his four tours. Cooper plays his character bolder in Iraq and sometimes almost sheepish while back in America. I say his ‘character’ and not Chris Kyle because no mater how true, or how many liberties are taken, he is not Chris Kyle. He’s a character. He has some qualities of Kyle, but also would add things that aren’t there. I don’t want any criticism I have of the film to be conflated with criticism of Chris Kyle. Not to say that there are things to criticize. There is a good deal of self mytholigizing done by the SEAL. He believes wholeheartedly in what he does. As good of a soldier that Cooper plays him to be, he’s that bad of a father and husband. He provides for his family, but he can’t be emotionally present for them. Not until his mission is done.
Eastwood is a great director to convey that mission. He’s had a spotty record though during this century. He started out on fire with Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Flags of our Fathers, and Letters from Iwo Jima. I also loved his Invictus. However, his other films between there and here are almost complete misfires. He gets his groove back here and I hope he can keep it up now at the tail end of his career. He’s been prolific in his later years, I want him to keep going. But his early westerns are among my favorites with High Plains Drifter, The Outlaw Josey Wales, and Pale Rider. He does convey Chris Kyle as a cowboy, and it’s obvious that’s how Kyle sees himself, at least early on in his career. If you’ve seen the trailer you recognize the scene above. He has to choose whether to shoot a child carrying a grenade. Eastwood takes us into that moment with the opening of the film, and right before the decision is made he cuts to a lengthy flashback sequence that shows Kyle as the All-American boy and his choices that led to being a SEAL. There is some troubling narrative here that seems to make a direct connection between 9/11 and al-Qaeda and the war in Iraq. I don’t think anyone is seriously making those connections anymore, but in 2003 plenty were. I hope that’s all this is, just to show Kyle’s mindset. He wants to be a patriot.
The scenes in Iraq are filmed by Eastwood classically at times, and more realistically at times too. It’s as if the handheld camera footage of 9/11 has changed cinema. That nothing filmmakers can create can be as real and dramatic as what we saw on our TV’s that day. Because of this it seems an obvious choice to take things into a hyper-realistic and heightened state. In doing this the scenes play out almost exactly like a Call of Duty video game. I enjoy those games a lot so this is not a criticism, but rather a compliment. Those games are more cinematic than anything out there right now. Similar to Black Hawk Dawn, Eastwood is able to make a coherent and easy to read geography of the battlefield so we know where danger is coming from at times, and obscures it at others to up the tension. This may have been my favorite part of the film, the staging. Heroism is in the forefront. But because of this another questionable choice is made. Bradley Cooper is given a villain, an adversary, to fight. Another sniper. We never meet him, just see him with his gun. All we know is that he is a former Olympian marksman. This is a video game quality. I don’t care if it was true, it’s just silly. Using visuals from a game is fine, using their stories less so. Other qualities of a game are used well though. There are great side characters that fight along side Cooper, but we never get to know them that well. In fact I only recognized one actor by name in the dozens that fight with him. This brings the focus to our main character and it needed to be done that way.
The scenes at home are done well. The editing between them is done even better. But they are just scenes. The connections are hard to make. This is more a collection of extremely well done scenes than a cohesive movie. Sienna Miller plays the wife admirably enough, but we just don’t get a lot of time with her. I used to think she could be the next big thing, but that was back in the mid 2000’s. Her best roles were as wives here and also in Foxcatcher. Perhaps she can turn things around and be that actress I thought she could be. I liked her much more than I thought I would. Eastwood knows how to direct great female characters as we saw in Million Dollar Baby, I would’ve liked to see more of some of those qualities here. The best scene at home was done when a soldier he saved sees him out in public and thanks him and his son. That was the most emotional part of the film until the end where real life footage is shown for the tragedy that was never shown at the gun range where Kyle was helping other veterans, but the PTSD of one overcame him and he violently took Kyle’s life. This could be just ‘PTSD: The Movie’ but thankfully some good directorial choices and a very strong performance make it more than that. But there are other choices that made me groan, like the flashback early on and the use of a villain without any nuance. This film is what you see is what you get. I wanted more. I see why it was nominated for a best picture, but it unfortunately won’t crack my top 10. It was better than Unbroken, but I still come back to Fury as a better war film this year. Though time could change my opinion. Regardless you need to see this movie. It is going to be a huge hit, and will be the talk of the filmgoing public for a while.
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