Film Review: “American Sniper”

The picture begins with a sniper in position on a rooftop in
Iraq, looking through his scope first at a young man, then at a woman and a
child, questioning over his radio whether he should take the shot. The
response, “Your call,” provides no guidance, so that in this situation and
throughout the movie, the sniper must make his own choices about killing his
target, not an abstract bull’s eye, but an actual, flesh-and-blood human being.
Those decisions govern the character and the life of Chris Kyle (Bradley
Cooper), the title character of “American Sniper,” based on the book about the
most lethal sniper in U.S. military history.

The movie
than flashes back to some scenes of Kyle’s youth in Texas, showing the boy
learning to hunt and shoot and hearing the stern lessons of his father about the
sort of man he must become. As a young man he competes in rodeos and likes to
think of himself as a cowboy; he changes his generally aimless life when he
sees news coverage of 1998 U.S. embassy bombings on television. Like a lot of
young men of that time, he decides to enlist, joining the Navy and embarking on
the rugged process of becoming a SEAL.

Older than
his fellow recruits, Kyle endures the brutal training, which mostly involves
being yelled at by sadistic instructors while being soaked with water, suffering
submersion in the cold ocean, and absorbing a good deal of pain. (In accordance
with military tradition, he naturally ends up in the arid, dusty cities of
Iraq, with no water in sight — so much for all that dunking and
sputtering).

The action
then returns to the opening scene of what turns out to be Kyle’s first
kill.  After that baptism in blood, Kyle
employs his ability to shoot with uncanny accuracy, acquiring a special status
among his comrades, who come to call him Legend. When they know he in effect
watches over them, they carry out their missions with increased confidence,
even recklessness — they believe that the Legend will shoot anyone intent on
ambush, and most of the time they are right.

Kyle
romances and eventually marries Taya (Sienna Miller), whom he met after
completing his SEAL training, which naturally complicates his life and his
mission. Taya wonders about the people, as she puts it, at the other end of his
rifle and about his dedication to his profession. When he keeps returning to
Iraq — four tours of duty — she angrily raises the obvious question about his
priorities, whether he would rather go to war or stay at home with his
children.

Chris Kyle’s
response to those issues provides little in the way of insight into his
character.  He mouths the usual tired
platitudes about patriotism, defending the greatest country on Earth (from the
people who did not attack it in 2011), keeping the terrorists from San Diego,
and other such blather. He also believes that all of his kills — over 160
confirmed by the military — were entirely justified, that they saved the lives
of many soldiers, regretting only the lives he couldn’t save.

Although the
picture tells a compelling and presumably true story, it mostly lingers on the
surface, providing little in the way of complexity in any of the characters,
including the protagonist. It only hints at anything resembling PTSD, showing
Chris Kyle’s eventual return to civilian life as a relatively smooth process in
which his only difficulties again arise from his awareness of the lives he
didn’t save. In a kind of compensation, he works with severely wounded veterans,
many maimed by that terrible, useless, endless war; even they regard him as a
hero.

The tragedy
of Chis Kyle’s life, however, derives not so much from his lack of
introspection, but from its premature ending. An apparently disturbed veteran
he counseled shot and killed him on a firing range, a tragic irony rare even
for literature or cinema. Saddest of all, “American Sniper” ends with the
actual footage of his funeral, with thousands of people, waving flags, veterans
saluting, watching the motorcade, the most moving sequence in a morally
troubling film.

This article appears in Jan 14-20, 2015.