The History Place - "American Sniper" Movie Review

The History Place - Movie Review

American Sniper

By Jim Castagnera
Special to The History Place
5/26/15

Chris Kyle, the protagonist in this Clint Eastwood film, is also listed as an executive producer in the closing credits. That’s because the work on the movie, based on Kyle’s autobiography, began back in 2012. Kyle, at 160 confirmed kills, the most proficient sniper in U.S. military history, was still very much alive. It was not until February 2013 that he was shot to death by a former marine with PTSD, whom Kyle had taken to a shooting range as a sort of therapy session.

Bradley Cooper, who garnered a “Best Actor” Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Kyle, acquired the rights to the sharpshooter’s book in May 2012. Steven Spielberg originally planned to bring a massive script, which he inspired, to life on the screen. When Warner Brothers’ budget constraints discouraged Spielberg, Eastwood got the job. The outcome, though competent, comes across as rather wooden. Cooper, though deserving of the nomination, sometimes gets so deeply into Kyle’s Texas drawl that I for one had a hard time catching all the dialog. At the end of the day, American Sniper walked away from February’s Academy Awards with only a sound-editing Oscar. And that’s probably all it deserved. If you want to test my criticism, compare this movie to The Hurt Locker, also reviewed by me in this space.

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After the Oscars, American Sniper has gone on to have a controversial afterlife, especially on college campuses. Early last month the University of Michigan’s Center for Campus Involvement cancelled a planned screening after receiving student complaints about how the movie depicts Middle Easterners. The cancellation hit the student daily newspaper, resulting in a backlash that led to a showing in an alternative venue. [https://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/jp/u-of-michigan-cancels-showing-of-american-sniper-after-student-complaints]

Much the same occurred a couple of weeks later at the University of Maryland’s College Park campus, where a Muslim-student group complained that American Sniper stereotyped Islamists and glorified violence against them. The film club pulled the flick from its spring lineup. [https://www.baltimoresun.com/features/baltimore-insider-blog/bal-university-of-maryland-student-group-cancels-american-sniper-showing-following-muslim-student-groups-20150423-story.html] Once again, a backlash resulted in a rescheduling of the screening. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/04/28/after-backlash-u-md-groups-to-screen-american-sniper-and-talk-it-out/]

Typically, a cluster of Oscar nominations results in a resurrection of a film at the box office. American Sniper no doubt benefited from this phenomenon, despite being largely ignored on Oscar night in favor of The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything, both of which I previously reviewed here. But the film’s real rebirth owes everything to the campus controversies exemplified above. Someone – historians disagree about exactly who – once said, “It doesn’t matter what they say about you, so long as they spell your name right.” (Candidates include Louisiana Governor Huey Long and Hollywood’s Betty Davis.) Certainly the bonanza realized by the author of Fifty Shades of Gray proves the point for all time.

But is the campus criticism of American Sniper fair? I doubt it. Kyle is portrayed by Cooper as a God-fearing patriot, who sincerely believed he was keeping America’s enemies from our shores by going after them in Iraq, where the Navy SEAL did four tours. On occasion he had to kill armed women and children who were approaching the Marine units he was protecting. He’s depicted as agonizing over these kills. Additionally, the Spielberg-inspired script adds (inevitably, since this is a Hollywood product) a fictional character called Mustafa, who is supposed to be Kyle’s Iraqi counterpart and nemesis. In the film’s climactic – and only really exciting – action sequence, Kyle and Mustafa confront one another through their sniper scopes at a mile’s distance. You can guess the outcome, but even so I won’t stoop to a spoiler. Suffice to say that Mustafa is sketched as a loving father, a heroic warrior and an all-around admirable character. Other Iraqi characters in the film come across as equally admirable, e.g., the sheik who offers to aid the American troops and his young son.

No, if Eastwood and Cooper are guilty of anything, it’s failing to make a riveting movie, something we know Eastwood is well able to do, unless he’s getting a little long in the tooth and losing his edge at age 85. Gosh, I hope not.

Rated R for strong and disturbing war violence, and language throughout including some sexual references.
Oscar and Academy Awards® are registered trademarks of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Jim Castagnera is a Philadelphia lawyer, consultant and writer, whose webpage is https://jamescastagnera.wordpress.com/. His most recent book is Handbook for Student Law for Higher Education Administrators (Revised Edition 2014).

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