About: American Sniper (2014) [Blu-ray]

American Sniper (2014) [Blu-ray]
Action | Biography | Thriller | War

Tagline: The most lethal sniper in U.S. history

Chris Kyle's (Bradley Cooper) mission is to protect his brothers in arms while bring a prime target of insurgents. Despite the danger, as well as the toll on his family at home, Chris serves through four harrowing tours of duty in Iraq, personifying the spirit of the SEAL creed to "leave no one behind." But upon returning to his wife, Taya Renae Kyle (Sienna Miller), and kids, Chris finds that it is the war he can't leave behind.

Storyline: Chris Kyle was nothing more than a Texan man who wanted to become a cowboy, but in his thirties he found out that maybe his life needed something different, something where he could express his real talent, something that could help America in its fight against terrorism. So he joined the SEALs in order to become a sniper. After marrying, Kyle and the other members of the team are called for their first tour of Iraq. Kyle's struggle isn't with his missions, but about his relationship with the reality of the war and, once returned at home, how he manages to handle it with his urban life, his wife and kids. Written by Evandro Martirano

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman, May 19, 2015 -- Few films -- War or otherwise -- have proven so precisely and intimately capable of presenting the dual destructive forces of war on man quite so well as American Sniper, Director Clint Eastwood's Iraq War film based on the autobiography of the same name by the late Navy SEAL Sniper Chris Kyle. Sniper is less a traditional "War" picture and more a study of the human condition. The film takes a look at how war externally and internally reshapes man and the people closest to him, particularly the people who fight their own wars off the front not against a traditional enemy but against the nature of war itself and the emotional tolls it takes on the soul. While the movie loosely follows the story of Kyle in the Iraqi theater, building up a few composite and manufactured quests for him along the way, it remains true to the spiritual essence of the book, offering a blunt, straightforward, and unapologetic look at how war shaped Kyle and his marriage, how it altered, and in some ways reinforced, his outlook on life and created a rift by way of a dual sense of commitment to his brothers-in-arms and his family back home, commitments that were always at odds with one another, resulting in an inward battle that often seemed more difficult for Kyle than life from his sniper's perch in Iraq's most dangerous cities.

Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) is a man of honor who was taught to shoot at a young age and stand up for himself and others. He works a rodeo but cannot find fulfillment in the arena. When he learns that the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania are attacked, he enlists in the Navy and enters SEAL training. He impresses his instructors with his shooting ability and is deployed to Iraq after 9/11. Before leaving, he marries a girl named Taya (Sienna Miller) whom he met in a bar. He's first deployed to Fallujah where he conducts "overwatch" operations -- he scans the battlefield through his rifle's scope and eliminates hostile threats before they can do harm to the men on the ground -- and he quickly comes to excel in identifying threats and saving lives. Meanwhile, Taya gives birth to a baby boy and becomes pregnant a second time while Chris is home. But he continues to re-enlist rather than stay home with his growing family, choosing his duty to country and his fellow servicemen over the needs of family back home in rural Texas.

American Sniper isn't made to glorify war or indulge in the mayhem of modern combat. It's not an Action movie and it's hardly rah-rah propaganda. It's instead a slow-boil film in which war destroys from the inside out. As Kyle thrives on the battlefield and his life comes to be defined by trigger time on the overwatch -- his commitment to saving lives is his one and only priority on the battlefield, not racking up kill counts or earning promotions -- his home life takes hit after hit as he redeploys for multiple tours and his commitment to his family lessens as the war, or better said his commitment to the people in the war, takes precedence. He leaves his overwatch position only when he believes his presence on the ground may be of more benefit to others than his place behind the scope. Kyle carries his commitment to his fellow servicemen at home, too, exemplified in the movie's best scene when Kyle hits the shooting range with a couple of disabled veterans. The moment gets to the core of who he is, a man committed to the service of others and, in that scene, doing so in a capacity he understands and in an environment in which he's most comfortable. In another scene, also stateside, a fellow veteran who Kyle once rescued notices him at a car repair establishment. Kyle respectfully plays down the "hero" status and appears clearly uncomfortable not with the man but with the idea that he's someone who has risen above others not necessarily in rank but rather in stature, seen as someone who did more than his job. Throughout the film, Kyle wrestles with who he is: the man he was raised to be, the man the teams made of him, the man that war shaped, the man other people see him to be, the man his wife wants, and the man his family needs. The physical cost of war is certainly evident in many scenes, but it's the emotional price paid that's at the center of the film and depicted ever more prominently and explored ever more thoroughly with each new scene at home and abroad.

American Sniper plays in stark contrast to Lone Survivor, that, too, an emotionally draining picture but one that's in a constant state of outward upheaval, one that depicts the horrors of war up close and personal in the moment and on the flesh. While that film, also based on a book penned by a SEAL veteran, does also find a deeper purpose beyond the raw terror of combat, it's much more outwardly engaging than is Sniper. Where Lone Survivor works like a series of literal explosions, American Sniper feels more like a figurative ticking time bomb with Kyle's fate at the end of timer, a fate that's more destined to be decided in his soul rather than on the battlefields of Iraq or back home with family in Texas. The movie, then, works through Kyle's story deliberately, hitting key character-building points from his childhood, SEAL training, and early days with Taya. But it's his time in Iraq and the ever-growing sense of purpose and duty that come to define him, a purpose for which he is prepared and, it seems, built for, with everything falling back into some pecking order of prioritization in the back of his mind, a list that slowly comes to light as his story progresses. The film introduces a few running plot arcs through the movie that serve really only to better define the character. His duel with the enemy sniper Mustafa (Sammy Sheik) and his pursuit of a high value enemy target known as "The Butcher" (Mido Hamada) give the broader action bits a glue that's not necessarily evident in the book -- there the story of war is told in a more linear, and sometimes almost piecemeal, perspective that's made of a collection of individual stories rather than a couple of focused pursuits -- and that here help to build the character's commitment to his brothers and challenge him deeper inside as he inwardly journeys throughout the film.

Director Clint Eastwood's masterpiece doesn't begin and end with Chris Kyle. The film is densely believable in almost every facet (fake babies, a few obvious dummies, and digital blood notwithstanding) and creates an authentic backdrop in every location, Iraq primarily but also back in Kyle's Texas. The film's war scenes are impeccably precise. There's a sense of large war-torn scale in crushed, cracked, and bullet-peppered buildings and rubble but also basic, lived-in uniforms, ball caps, and even the wear and tear on weapons and gear that give the movie a realistic flavor. The action scenes feel painstakingly recreated, perhaps not on the same level of raw intensity as other modern combat films but holding their own in light of the story's wider requirements. Bradley Cooper turns in what may be remembered as a career-defining performance as the legendary sniper, crafting a fully believable individual shaped by life experience and defined by his unflinching dedication to his fellow servicemen. Cooper's portrayal is superficially simple but finds an astonishing breadth of character inside that he conveys in every way the movie requires, verbally or otherwise. He crafts a full, robust individual that's not simply a recreation of words on a page. The actor instead seems to find the essence of the man behind those words and plays the part with a careful precision that's nothing short of a tribute to a fallen hero.

Despite its broad critical praise, American Sniper proved divisive along parts of the political spectrum. While speaking of the movie, liberal filmmaker Michael Moore called snipers "cowards" but went on to defend his position and claim a broader support for the troops in the fallout of his comments. Actor Seth Rogan compared the film to Nazi propaganda. On the other side, countless conservative commentators were quick to defend the film and its subject. Yet through the noise, audiences flocked to the movie and the Academy saw fit to grace it with several key Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor. But such trifling things as who loved it or who didn't, who went to see it and who didn't, what it won and what it didn't, all seem insignificant next to the film's deep and intimate grandeur of its depiction of the deeper consequences of war seen more through the prism of the soul and less through the eyes or experienced by the body. It's a masterwork of storytelling and a fascinatingly intimate look into the essence of man and how war can shape him, define him, and reinforce his ideals, sometimes to the betterment of who he is and sometimes to the detriment of those around him. Kyle's legacy isn't that of a killer but rather a helper, a man who fought not to kill but to save, a man who, even at the price of some distance from his family and even his own life, lived only in service of others. Eastwood's film is a fitting, satisfying tribute that should live on for decades to come as one of the great War and character films of its time. Warner Brothers' Blu-ray release of American Sniper is a little thin on extra content, but video is excellent and sound is terrific. American Sniper earns my highest recommendation.

[CSW] -3.4- I agree with this reviewer:

This was a good but not great movie. Frankly, is was a tough task to put Kyle's book, which was more a telling of events than one continuous story, into a movie. Clint and his team really failed in putting these events into something that worked as one homogeneous story. It felt very disjointed which in turn made the movie much less engaging than it could have been. His fellow soldiers were not developed at all character wise, so only knowing these were real people made you feel it when they died. Cooper was great and deserves the accolades in graduating to "real" acting. Like many other reviewers, I think it would have been much more interested in the "after" war story in place of something other scenes. My hats off to all vets and their families who take on the responsibility of going to war.

[V4.5-A5.0] MPEG-4 AVC - D-Box 10/10.

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