American Sniper

Based on the true story, Bradley Cooper stars as Chris Kyle – a patriotic ranch hand and rodeo cowboy from Texas who greatly believes in serving his country. While he is a bit older than many newly enlisted men, he does have great heart and talent, which leads to him becoming a Navy SEAL and sniper as the war on terror spreads. While Kyle goes on to become a legendary sniper in the military, we also see the emotional and mental cost to him and his family.

American Sniper is the movie about heroes in our military that should be made more often. Director Clint Eastwood and writer Jason Hall couldn’t care less what you think about the war in Iraq or Afghanistan. Those are other movies for other people to make. This movie exists to investigate the life of a dedicated, patriotic man making sacrifices for a cause he believes in, and his journey is one that shocks and inspires as the audience weaves through the complexity of the situation and what Kyle faces each and every day.

Cooper has never been better at embodying a character. This Philly boy sounds and moves like a Texan, in a good way. Maybe Marky Mark should have worked with Cooper before taking the role of a Texan in Transformers 4.

It’s great to see Cooper transform physically for the role as he bulks up and carries himself differently, but his greatest triumph is the personality transformation. The script and Cooper focus in on how Kyle is driven by the cause, the desire to do what he believes is right and good, but also by his dedication to the men and women serving with him. It takes a real hero to leave the safety of his sniper’s nest and join in the dangerous fight on the ground, going from door to door and facing uncertain danger at every turn, but the audience sees this determination and dedication in Kyle, and Cooper helps us understand why he would do so.

However, Cooper truly stuns the audience as we watch Kyle’s growing discomfort each time he returns from a tour, increasingly becoming distant from his wife, having trouble accepting his job and what he has seen around him. It’s not a condemnation of war or some sort of statement, but a realistic reaction to being in a war zone as long and as often as Kyle was.

Eastwood deserves much more credit for his direction than he has received so far. He awesomely captures the explosive action, the chilling silence, the frightening tension, and the difficult decisions that have to be made in a split second. He is putting us in a position to look through the crosshairs, the binoculars, the scope of the gun, surveillance from above, into the trucks, into the hallways, and more. These perspective shots even further help the audience understand what is happening to our heroes on screen.

Eastwood’s opening scene for American Sniper is one of the best you will ever see in a movie, but the ending needs more work. Eastwood and the team rush the ending, making it happen so suddenly it loses the needed impact on the audience. Kyle’s return stateside led to some amazing work with others who struggled with their wartime experiences and this could have been a much bigger part of American Sniper, especially since it has so much impact on the ultimate resolution of his story, rather than being dropped on us out of nowhere.

American Sniper is rated R for strong and disturbing war violence, and language throughout including some sexual references.