AMERICAN SNIPER

Reviewed by Patrick Gibbs

GRADE: B +
Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, Keir O'Donnell, Elise Robertson 
Based on the book by Chris Kyle
Directed by Clint Eastwood

Rated R (violence, profanity, disturbing images) I'm a big fan of Clint Eastwood the director, in particular Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River, and even the wildly underrated Invictus, which I found to be one of Eastwood's most entertaining films. But any time you have a director who's this prolific, and has had a career that has spanned decades, you're going to have some misfires. There's no doubt that Clint has slumped down a bit in his director's chair in recent years (when he's not having arguments with it), and sometimes his movies tend to resemble an old man telling a story and suddenly losing track of what the point was two thirds of the way through (the wildly uneven J. Edgar and Hereafter are great examples of this analogy.). American Sniper is Eastwood's best film in a few years, without a doubt, but it's not up there with his very best work, and honestly, that's more a failing of the material than of the direction.
Chris Kyle (Cooper) works as a rodeo cowboy but wants more and signs up to become a Navy SEAL. He completes his training and meets his future wife (Sienna Miller.). As it did with many people, September 11, 2001 changed things for Chris Kyle. From there on out, he was a man on a mission. He is deployed to Iraq as a sniper. He makes many kills, and is given the nickname "The Legend" but agonizes over the soldiers he could not save. At home his wife is pregnant and anxious. Chris comes home, but finds his thoughts are back in Iraq and he enlists for a second tour. Cooper gives a very strong central performance, and Eastwood handles the character oriented sequences nicely, especially those involving the struggle with PTSD. He fares even better with some very suspenseful scenes or the war, including a spectacular sandstorm sequence and harrowing moments where Chris the sniper is literally faced with life and death decisions, some times involving women and children.
For me, the flaw to this movie is the lack of ability to connect with Chris Kyle. He may have been the deadliest sniper in U.S. History, but that doesn't inherently make him an interesting person.  The movie is more successful when it's capturing the overall experience of the American soldier or the veteran suffering from PTSD than when it is trying to follow Kyle's life specifically, though Chris himself is at his most interesting and likable when we see him volunteering to help other veterans to work through their emotional problems, which ultimately lead to tragedy. Producer/Star Bradley Cooper, who has nurtured this project for a while now and was really the driving force behind it, felt very strongly about staying true to the point of view of the late Chris Kyle, the title character and author of the book on which the film was based, and to make the movie he would have wanted. This is a laudable goal, but it's also the primary reason the film failed to really connect with me. On the upside, the film is very non judgmental: we see Chris railing against the "savages" he has killed in the Middle East and his wife being upset by his callous attitude, but it neither vilifies him for his views, nor tries too hard to support them. It merely portrays them, and there's a lot to be said for that choice. The ending of the film is abrupt and awkward, and I felt that it was trying to hard to avoid the obvious ironies that exist in the story of Chris Kyle.  This is definitely a good film, but it's not an inspired or great film.