We're not here to talk about Chris Kyle or how truthful his book is or his politics or director Clint Eastwood's politics. You could despise each and every one of these elements that went into making AMERICAN SNIPER, the movie, and still find the film compelling as both a character study and a film about war that doesn't get too deep into the reasons why the American military was in Iraq in the first place. (It's my understanding that in his book Kyle draws a direct line from the 9/11 attacks to America being in Iraq, something the movie skirts ever so slightly.) As a pure cinematic experience, American Sniper has more than a handful of impressive sequences on both sides of the war, and that has to be considered.
Filmmakers (other than the ones who make documentaries, obviously) are in no way obliged to stick to the truth and nothing but the truth; it's sometimes better when they do, but it's not a requirement. Dramatic license is a real thing; deal with it. If changes to reality make for better storytelling, I think audiences are smart enough to know that Bradley Cooper is playing a character in AMERICAN SNIPER and therefore is meant to represent the spirit of Chris Kyle than to actually be him. Kyle was nicknamed "Legend" on the battlefield because he had more confirmed kills than any other sniper in U.S. military history. Some might be impressed by that; some horrified. That isn't the point. What Eastwood and screenwriter Jason Hall are attempting to do here is illustrate the type of man Kyle was beyond his abilities as a sharpshooter.
As a husband and father, for example, Kyle was a bit of a mess for many years (he did four tours of duty). According to the film, seeing the attacks on the World Trade Center inspired him to enlist in the U.S. Navy (eventually becoming a SEAL), and his sense of duty and wanting to protect his fellow soldiers kept him re-enlisting, forcing his new wife Taya (Sienna Miller) and young children to live alone for months on end. When he was stateside, Kyle was adrift and found it difficult to take the day-to-day tasks seriously while men were dying in the Middle East. I've seen other films (feature and docs) that have covered this ground, but Cooper is so focused and steely eyed, you understand where Kyle's mind was when his wife wanted him to be present and accounted for on the homefront.
As lost as Kyle seems stateside, he seems completely comfortable and in tune with the world around him when he's got an enemy to deal with. Eastwood shows us a man who is most comfortable when he has a mission that means something that he considers worthy. Whenever AMERICAN SNIPER slips into plot mode, things don't function as well. The idea that the Legend might have been known behind enemy lines might have been true (we're told a bounty was put on his head, which made his downtime in Iraq perhaps more dangerous than the time he spent doing his job), but it seems silly to frequently pit the skills of Kyle against those of an enemy sniper. The film and Cooper work best when we're given the opportunity to get to know him a bit and understand why he goes to a bar instead of his home when he returns from overseas.
Sienna Miller is also quite good as Taya, and the film might have benefitted greatly from having her being more in the film than she is. Still, watching Taya transition from unhappy house wife to a woman smart enough to understand that simply asking her husband to be around more isn't going to cut it leads to some great sequences in which she finds a way to find Chris a new mission at home worthy of replacing the one in Iraq. She encourages him to spend time at a local VA hospital, working with vets suffering both physical and psychological damage. He spent time with these men in and out of the hospital, and most importantly, doing so made Chris feel like he was still saving lives. It's the part of the film that works the best and offers the most emotional heft (so naturally, the people cutting the trailers for the film aren't showing you any of that).
I don't mean to make AMERICAN SNIPER sounds like it's nothing but an emotional rollercoaster. If anything, it reminds us that there are many kinds of tense, charged rides in life, and Kyle experiences a great number of them on the battlefield, sitting for hours in one position, waiting for his target to show himself. The scene being shown in trailers for the film of Kyle targeting a woman and child, jointly carrying a weapon, doesn't even begin to hint at the tension that is built in those minutes. It's terrifying, heartbreaking and results in pure devastation. And moments like that are repeated with incredible precision throughout the film. As a pure filmic experience, there is a great deal to appreciate and admire here. Eastwood reminds us why he is one of the great American directors, just months after people believed he had lost his touch with last year's Jersey Boys.
By centering on this husband-and-wife team that found a balance, a way to make their cross purposes work, Eastwood and his team bring this flawed but brave man's story to life—or at least a portion of it. It doesn't ask some of the hard questions, but I'm not sure that's necessary. Still, it keeps the film from being truly great. As it stands, it works a great deal of the time, and it takes us inside the often-frazzled mind of a soldier who is hard-wired like few others on the planet. Bearded and bulked-up almost to the point of being unrecognizable, Cooper is the heart and soul of AMERICAN SNIPER, and he does his subject with an honesty that isn't about facts; it's about capturing the soul of a man.
The film adds the saddest of codas to its story that many of you might now, but I won't ruin it for those planning to see the film. It's a bittersweet (mostly bitter) and shocking end to the life of a man who lived by the sword and was prepared to die the same way, although probably not in this most bizarre and tragic manner. Chalk up AMERICAN SNIPER as a learning experience, and we're able to take stock in the life of a man most of us will never understand, but the film at least gives us the opportunity to peek into his brain and see how it works. In that sense, the film sometimes manages to be an enlightening and uplifting experience.
