Far from an excerise in yahoo-ism, American Sniper offers us a film startlingly immediate in its action scenes. Coming to be known as “The Legend,” Navy Seal Chris Kyle, its subject, went through four tours in the Iraq War, in which he performed around 160 official “kills.” (and apparently another hundred unofficial ones). The film does an adequate if not equally proficient job of showing the tally all the warfare takes on his psyche. Like Kyle, director Clint Eastwood seems eager to get back to Iraq. In between the tours, domestic scenes with his wife (Sienna Miller) show an increasingly distant Kyle. More detail could have been presented but his emotional and mental deterioration come across nonetheless. Although Kyle approached his mission with an unwavering patriotism, Kyle viewed himself much differently than his peers viewed him.
Although it may be tempting to dismiss American Sniper, based on Kyle’s best selling memoir, as a warts-and-all apologia for what was an ill-advised war effort, it goes beyond taking political sides. The film keeps enough distance from Kyle, who Lee, a fellow soldier, says has a “savior complex.” When Lee’s mother later reads at his graveside a letter her son wrote questioning the war, Kyle’s response contains no empathy. “It was the letter that killed him,” he tells his disbelieving wife on the drive home from the funeral.
Once the war was underway it was real human beings who made the personal sacrifices. Just war or unjust war, the stress and strain of the day-to-day combat was as harsh an undertaking as can be imagined. Eastwood brings it home with panache. He leaves no stone unturned in putting us on the front lines. All the chatter surrounding Kyle’s lost defamation suit after claiming to have beaten up in a bar fight none other than Jesse Ventura, may indeed point to a less than reliable source of truth and reality. Does that mean American Sniper’s facts are possibly skewed? Subtract some of the hyperbole surrounding The Legend’s feats and you’ve still got a helluva story. Operating in the myth arena as usual, Eastwood is mostly going for an archetype here anyway. He succeeds. Chris Kyle is memorable for his extreme focus on going after the enemy, at exalting his comrades, at finding himself bewildered that the ostensibly important areas of his life–his wife, his kids–seem to pale in comparison with his getting himself back to Iraq to continue The Fight. No matter the fight itself might be a futile, misguided folly that’s gotten out of hand. That only makes it all the more tragic.
Cooper, securing his third straight Oscar nomination for this role, makes Kyle’s gee-whiz righteousness believable. He chillingly brings to life a character who, despite being an uncanny shot, fails at the Seals shooting range until a live target presents itself. Once in Iraq, as he runs over everything in his path, he gains the nickname al-Shaitan (“the devil”) and a bounty on his head increases. Miller (also the stung wife in Foxcatcher), showcases a character who rolls with a determination to bring her husband back to a status quo that is steadily slipping away. It’s a shame the same cheesy magic bullet depicted here to travel more than a mile to meet its target once Kyle lines up his money shot, didn’t also possess similar extra powers to heal Kyle and his family. Instead, what seems like a cruel joke hangs over the coda of the film, as Kyle meets an ironic fate that takes place entirely offscreen. Despite a missed opportunity for a closing statement, Eastwood, 84, has proven with American Sniper that there’s plenty of life left in his talents after the empty chair episode at the Republican Convention.