American Sniper

Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) is a 'legend' and a 'hero' to his mates for his unerring skill as an American Sniper in the war in Iraq. His task, along with his fellow snipers, is to protect the ground troupes engaged in house to house searches by picking off enemy snipers and combatants. His superior 'kill' record is behind his fame.

I'm quite conflicted by this film. It opens with scenes of the childhood Kyle receiving lessons from his father on his responsibilities as a family defender, scenes which are every bit as unpleasant as the war scenes to follow. The film then quickly jumps to the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York which inspires and leads to Kyle's enlistment as a Navy SEAL. He marries and starts a family and serves four tours of duty to Iraq. All the while he grows more distant from his family and increasingly disturbed by his war experiences.

From Twitter I see there are people who having seen this film are enthused to join in the killing spree. I find this response to the film disturbing. Whilst I feared in its early scenes that the film was into glorifying the war the fact is that pretty well all the combatants are shown to eventually be severely damaged mentally and/or physically by their experiences. Yet despite severe damage those who might be said to be survivors remain drawn to involvement in weapons.

The futility of the war is obvious with nothing achieved apart from injury, death and mayhem but the film seems uninterested to underline this fact.

Cooper's performance is quite brave as he departs far from the handsome charmer of his early movies  and it looks like he will be well rewarded financially. Cooper is one of the film's producers and the movie is a box office hit having taken nearly $100 million dollars on its first weekend in the USA.

This is very firmly an American view of the conflict. Technically I suppose the film is well made but I had difficulty following the dialogue, large amounts of which were unintelligible to me. I simply couldn't make out what the actors were saying.

Whilst I'm concerned the film sparks an healthy reaction from some, assessing it rationally I rate it
★★★