American Sniper (2014)

I had a very complicated, almost divided reaction to American Sniper, which is based on the life of Chris Kyle, the most successful sniper in the history of the American military. The movie itself seems divided as well. Kyle (played by Bradley Cooper) managed to kill hundreds of Iraqis while trying to protect Marines and others who were a part of the war effort, yet he found himself increasingly unable to return to civilian life after each of his tours of duty. While the film doesn’t ostensibly seem to take any sides in the debate over the war itself, its depiction of Kyle’s single-minded dedication to his job as a killer struck me as troubling. We are asked both to accept the depth of his concern for the lives of those he protects in battle and to recognize that his career—particularly his remarkable skill and success at killing—is destroying his ability to have a “normal” existence with his family. I realize that the filmmakers were hewing very closely to the best-selling autobiography Kyle wrote, but the film makes little effort to make connections between what happens during war and what the consequences of those events are.

The center of the film is the performance by Cooper, who plays Kyle as a man who never questions what he is supposed to do in life. When he is younger, still a child, he obeys whatever his father tells him. His father is the one who teaches him how to shoot and how to not only defend himself but those who need defending. As a result, Kyle develops a rather strict moral code that he tends to follow for the rest of his life. For example, when he returns early from a rodeo weekend to discover a girlfriend cheating on him with another man, he throws out both the guy and then the girlfriend. He asks no questions and he refuses to accept her explanations; she has done something wrong, so she is no longer a part of his life—it’s that simple. He realizes that he has to look after his younger brother, and so he does. He knows that he’s supposed to go to church and read the Bible, so he does. He knows he needs to serve his country when he sees the attacks on our embassies, so he does. Later, when he and his wife watch the attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11, he doesn’t have to wonder what he should do. He knows that he will be going after the people who have attacked America and he will be trying to protect his wife and family.

Of course, such a story sounds incredibly simplistic. Were there never any thoughts, for example, that perhaps his father was too stern with his younger brother? (The father does seem to be ready to whip the little boy after he’s been bullied at school. All that saves him is their mother and the fact that Kyle has beaten up the bully to protect his sibling.)  Does he ever contemplate whether or not the United States is going after the right people by invading Iraq or does he just accept that what his commander-in-chief tells him is the truth? Where does the film grapple with these issues? They might have provided some context for understanding Kyle as a more realistic human being, but they are absent from American Sniper.

After the opening sequence (more on that later), the film follows a somewhat predictable chronological order. We see Kyle’s childhood, his enlistment and training, his courtship of his wife Taya (played by Sienna Miller), and then a series of tours of duty and returns to the States. Most of the choices for the overall plot are reasonable. However, the montage of how he and the other Navy SEALs are trained seemed rather, well, silly. I hope that the Navy actually toughens them up by means other than forcing them to sit in cold mud and lying in the ocean waves with their arms interlocked with fellow candidates. Yes, I realize that I don’t want someone to spray me with a hose while I’m trying to do leg lifts, but surely a SEAL goes through much more arduous training that what is shown here. Perhaps the Navy wouldn’t allow a depiction of the actual methods used for making enlistees into SEALs. You have to expect it’s a great deal more than this, though.

I tried for a while to keep count of the number of people that Kyle kills, but the numbers got too overwhelming too quickly. The ones that are shown, especially in a sequence involving a massive dust storm, are very tense moments. The film does an admirable job of depicting the dangers of war and the kinds of loss that the men and women who serve must make. It also opens our eyes to the kind of dedication that being in a war zone takes. A significant portion of the film focuses on the search for an Iraqi called “The Butcher” and Kyle’s plan to kill both The Butcher and his accomplice, a Syrian sharpshooter only known as Mustafa. Since the film uses these historical figures as part of the plot, you get to see just how close the Americans came at times to stopping some of the worst of the war criminals and how they felt when they lost out on an opportunity. To watch American Sniper is, to a large extent, to experience the sense of both the dedication and frustration that people like Kyle experienced.

The scenes of war are interspersed with scenes of Kyle’s life when he returns from a tour of duty. These moments are some of the most painful to watch, including a scene where his wife’s doctor tries to get him to seek some medical help or when a fellow soldier tries to get him to come to the local VA to talk with some other returned veterans. Kyle refuses all help because he thinks that he is fine even though almost anyone around him can tell that he is too tense and wary to be truly okay. What is difficult to determine is whether or not Kyle ever realized that his mental state back in the U.S. was being so severely affected by what he witnessed in war. He’s unable for long periods of time to share with his wife what he has seen and done, a sore spot in their relationship. He won’t acknowledge the losses of his comrades, and he even refuses to accept the thanks that he receives for all of the good that he has done on behalf of the other soldiers. When he makes a remarkable transformation after meeting with some wounded veterans, we aren’t given any information to let us know what has changed for him, just that he’s changed. It’s moments like this that I found most infuriating about this film. What prompted Kyle to leave the Navy and start working with his fellow veterans would have provided us some insight into what makes this man who he is, but the film leaves it to our imagination to wonder what has happened to make him such a different man.

The Iraq war has become a subject of a spate of recent movies, and it’s both tempting and difficult to compare them. If this film differs from The Hurt Locker, a film that won the Oscar for Best Picture just six years ago, it’s the greater emphasis on how difficult a time the soldiers have in adjusting back to civilian life. While The Hurt Locker placed more emphasis on how an adrenaline junkie like its main character finds life back at home boring, American Sniper really focuses on the sense of purpose someone like Kyle misses when not in country. Cooper, so very different in this film from much of his previous work, does manage to convey just how lost Kyle seems to feel when he’s not involved in helping his country and his countrymen in trying to stop what he sees as evil in the world.

Technically, the film is solid work overall. Director Clint Eastwood doesn’t tend to go for flashy cinematography and editing in his films. Even the special effects do not “stand out” as distinctive; they’re just what you would expect in a war movie, nothing more and nothing less. American Sniper is rather good old-fashioned classical Hollywood-style movie-making. There are a few exceptions here and there such as the opening sequence involving Kyle’s first kills: a boy and a woman who are trying to blow up some Marines on the ground. The camera allows us here—and at a couple of other times—to see what Kyle sees through his rifle’s scope, the limited amount of vision that he has to rely upon to make a decision that could be the difference between life and death and between glory and dishonor. After that sequence, though, the film reverts to a more standard biopic structure only to return briefly to this moment in Kyle’s life when it fits more properly into the story of his life.

In a way, it was a very savvy choice on the part of the filmmakers to withhold information that would or could have forced the audience to have only one narrow option for interpreting the film’s politics; it might have been easier to choose a side and present it relentlessly throughout the film. However, liberals and progressives can watch American Sniper and concentrate primarily upon the damage that war inflicts on its soldiers. They can pay close attention to Kyle’s difficulties in transitioning to civilian life and how some involvement with others who have had similar experiences is necessary in order for his healing to begin. They can use the film’s plot as evidence for additional funding for therapy and/or other approaches to helping returning veterans and even as an argument against war given the drastic impact that it has on its participants. By contrast, conservatives can emphasize Kyle’s level of devotion to his country, the kind of unquestioning patriotism that he exhibits. They can point to the level of sacrifice that it takes to serve one’s country, a willingness to give up all of the privileges of being an American in order to maintain the way of life that we have come to expect. They can describe the film’s plot as a testament to the need for more support, financial and otherwise, for the military and those who are serving on behalf of the United States and even as evidence for additional involvement in war efforts in order to continue preserving the culture that produces people like Kyle. Because of the somewhat enigmatic approach taken by the creators of the film, both sides can make their case, and in a sense, both will be correct. Some viewers, of course, will consider this ambiguity a failing of the film, but I would consider it the component that raises American Sniper from being a merely good or competently made film into one that raises rather than settles important questions about our involvement in war and the impact on the people who are most directly affected by it.

Oscar Win: Best Achievement in Sound Editing

Other Nominations: Best Motion Picture, Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Bradley Cooper), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Achievement in Sound Mixing, Best Achievement in Film Editing