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| Directed by Clint Eastwood Written by Jason Hall |
Alo Party Peoples.
Regardless of its actual artistic merit, whether or not you will enjoy American Sniper is likely dependent on your political affiliation, that is if "enjoy" is the proper word for a movie about the War on Terror. That's probably not by design, despite what some on the left have said about it, this is not a fascist propaganda piece disguised as an awards season biopic, but I don't blame them for feeling that about it. The film takes so little if any stance on either the war it depicts or the life it places at its center that the audience is left to insert their own meaning where the film makers have either failed or chosen not to do so.
In case you had never heard of him, Chris Kyle was a rodeo performer in rural Texas that joined the Navy SEALS after 9/11 and was stationed as a sniper in the Iraq War. Over the course of four tours of service he racked up a series of impressive long range shots eventually becoming the most lethal sniper in American military history. In 2009 he retired from active duty to become a life coach for fellow veterans and was starting to recover from implied PTSD, where he was tragically shot by an unstable client whom he had taken to a gun range for stress counseling.
Now that you know those facts, or are intrigued enough to read the autobiography the film is based on, there isn't really that much incentive to see American Sniper unless your'e intending to use it as either an effigy of the right to be scorned or as a pep rally for the GOP. All the film offers is recreations of a series of events happening to and around Chris Kyle presented matter-of-factly without any sort of commentary on either the man himself or the war he served in. He makes shots, he loses shots, he gets into a rivalry with an equally skilled sniper on the enemy side, he gets into arguments with his wife over constant re-enlistment, he retires and then dies off-screen, all presented in clear detail without comment. In fact, if the film takes any perspective, its that of the late Chief Kyle himself. It captures that he was driven by the moral obligation to use his marksmanship to protect his fellow soldiers from harm, and that once he left the battlefield he transitioned from protecting them from experiencing trauma to helping them recover after it's already happened. I can see the line of thought involved, I.e. feeling that imposing some sort of message upon Chris Kyle's life story that he isn't around to comment upon would be disrespectful, but choosing not to hurts the film in a big way.
That sort of 'just the facts, man' presentation works in the context of an autobiography, but as a scripted movie it doesn't quite. It would be one thing if this were a documentary, but the only documentary footage in American Sniper is footage of his memorial service played over the end credits. Everything else, regardless of how much it sticks to the text, is fictionalized to some extent by its very nature. Since a film inevitably has to choose what to depict and what not to in order to craft a narrative, it becomes less about facts and becomes about story, and stories generally need a point in order to be worth a damn. It has the same problem that Boyhood has, in that it moves from scene to scene with no real purpose since the story it tells isn't quite finished, in this case due to the movie starting production before Chief Kyle's death. That's by no means the fault of the film makers, it's just unfortunate. Unlike Boyhood however, which was a slow meandering slog, American Sniper rushes through its story so quickly that there isn't much time to absorb the impact that the war had on this man.
That's not to say that American Sniper is exactly bad, a film with this sort of subject matter can't help but be quietly powerful on an emotional level, but it isn't Best Picture material and I feel that it would have worked better as a documentary.
Have a nice day.
Greg.B
Regardless of its actual artistic merit, whether or not you will enjoy American Sniper is likely dependent on your political affiliation, that is if "enjoy" is the proper word for a movie about the War on Terror. That's probably not by design, despite what some on the left have said about it, this is not a fascist propaganda piece disguised as an awards season biopic, but I don't blame them for feeling that about it. The film takes so little if any stance on either the war it depicts or the life it places at its center that the audience is left to insert their own meaning where the film makers have either failed or chosen not to do so.
In case you had never heard of him, Chris Kyle was a rodeo performer in rural Texas that joined the Navy SEALS after 9/11 and was stationed as a sniper in the Iraq War. Over the course of four tours of service he racked up a series of impressive long range shots eventually becoming the most lethal sniper in American military history. In 2009 he retired from active duty to become a life coach for fellow veterans and was starting to recover from implied PTSD, where he was tragically shot by an unstable client whom he had taken to a gun range for stress counseling.
Now that you know those facts, or are intrigued enough to read the autobiography the film is based on, there isn't really that much incentive to see American Sniper unless your'e intending to use it as either an effigy of the right to be scorned or as a pep rally for the GOP. All the film offers is recreations of a series of events happening to and around Chris Kyle presented matter-of-factly without any sort of commentary on either the man himself or the war he served in. He makes shots, he loses shots, he gets into a rivalry with an equally skilled sniper on the enemy side, he gets into arguments with his wife over constant re-enlistment, he retires and then dies off-screen, all presented in clear detail without comment. In fact, if the film takes any perspective, its that of the late Chief Kyle himself. It captures that he was driven by the moral obligation to use his marksmanship to protect his fellow soldiers from harm, and that once he left the battlefield he transitioned from protecting them from experiencing trauma to helping them recover after it's already happened. I can see the line of thought involved, I.e. feeling that imposing some sort of message upon Chris Kyle's life story that he isn't around to comment upon would be disrespectful, but choosing not to hurts the film in a big way.
That sort of 'just the facts, man' presentation works in the context of an autobiography, but as a scripted movie it doesn't quite. It would be one thing if this were a documentary, but the only documentary footage in American Sniper is footage of his memorial service played over the end credits. Everything else, regardless of how much it sticks to the text, is fictionalized to some extent by its very nature. Since a film inevitably has to choose what to depict and what not to in order to craft a narrative, it becomes less about facts and becomes about story, and stories generally need a point in order to be worth a damn. It has the same problem that Boyhood has, in that it moves from scene to scene with no real purpose since the story it tells isn't quite finished, in this case due to the movie starting production before Chief Kyle's death. That's by no means the fault of the film makers, it's just unfortunate. Unlike Boyhood however, which was a slow meandering slog, American Sniper rushes through its story so quickly that there isn't much time to absorb the impact that the war had on this man.
That's not to say that American Sniper is exactly bad, a film with this sort of subject matter can't help but be quietly powerful on an emotional level, but it isn't Best Picture material and I feel that it would have worked better as a documentary.
Have a nice day.
Greg.B
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