The fake baby did give a good performance though
With the exception of the fake baby, American Sniper is a well done film. At 84 years old, Clint Eastwood is still an excellent director. The action scenes are very well shot and the acting is good. Bradley Cooper just received his 3rd Oscar nomination in a row for this film and while I personally wouldn't have nominated him (I wanted Jake Gyllenhaal to be nominated for Nightcrawler), I won't deny the fact that he continues to prove himself as a very strong actor who can do both comedy and drama effectively. His performance carries the film. His Texan accent is surprisingly believable which is a relief because a bad Texan accent can veer into unintentional hilarity and there are a couple nice subtle moments in particular when his acting stands out (particularly a scene set in a bar). I also liked the way his version of Chris Kyle did not embrace his legendary status, and seemed uncomfortable with people cheering him on for kills. Unfortunately, my praise mostly ends there. The film has so many story issues that really bring it down. It's hard to know where to begin.
Bradley Cooper in American Sniper
The one thing that surprised me was that I figured the sheep were either Iraqi or American civilians, but they're actually U.S. Marines. I'm not a Marine and I don't have any Marine family members but I feel like this movie would upset Marines. Most of the film seems to involve Chris Kyle, the Navy Seal, protecting the Marines who seemingly can't do anything themselves. This gets especially ridiculous when Chris literally abandons his sniper post (which is apparently allowed because he doesn't get in trouble for it) to help teach the marines how to properly raid a house, because Chris Kyle, the Navy Seal, even has to do the Marines' jobs for them.
Then there's the character of Mustafa, a Syrian sniper and arguably the main antagonist of the film. Mustafa is not a completely fictional creation as he's mentioned in a single paragraph in Chris Kyle's book as a rumor, but I still feel his character served no purpose. He has no lines and no physical presence so he's not an interesting antagonist. He literally serves as a parallel to Chris Kyle, the evil Chris Kyle, I guess you could say and those parallels sure do get heavyhanded at one point. Having scenes from Mustafa's viewpoint honestly really took me out of it. The Hurt Locker was so effective to me because we saw things only from the soldiers' point of view. The insurgents were mysterious figures in the shadows so we were just as in the dark as the main characters were. By including Mustafa's viewpoint, there's no shock for the viewer when a U.S. soldier is killed by an enemy sniper because we literally just saw the sniper's scope seconds earlier. I do think showing both points of view in a conflict can be effective in some films, but since Mustafa is such a boring character, it doesn't work at all here. And the parkour scenes are just laughable and feel like something out of a cheesy action film, not a gritty war drama.
Sammy Sheik's one-note performance as Mustafa
Perhaps the most irritating thing was the way the film squeezes 9/11 into the plot. There's a scene where Chris and his wife are watching the news and see the 9/11 attacks on TV. This scene serves no purpose as Chris goes to war in Iraq, not Afghanistan. I've heard people defend the scene because it explains why Chris became a Navy Seal in the first place which makes me question if they were paying attention to the film. Chris joined the Navy Seals in 1999, not 2001, and the film shows that Chris Kyle joined the Seals in reaction to the 1998 United States Embassy Bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, so it made sense to show his reaction to those terrorist attacks. Showing 9/11 was just cheap. I've heard people accuse the film of trying to make it seem like the Iraq war was in response to 9/11 but I don't think it was intentional deceit. However, I do think the film used 9/11 as a cheap plot device to emotionally charge the audience which isn't much better.
Several people have criticized the film for not discussing America's reasons for being in Iraq (there's a really quick scene where Chris justifies it), but that wasn't an issue for me. The Hurt Locker doesn't go into the politics of the Iraq war either. The difference is that The Hurt Locker made up for that with three really interesting characters and thrillingly staged tension throughout while American Sniper seemed stuck in mediocrity.
Other small issues are present throughout which aren't huge problems on their own but feel like a lot when combined with everything else. We've got Kyle's brother who we learn joins the military (which seems to concern Chris initially) except it doesn't matter because the movie promptly drops his character who is never even mentioned again. There's a kill scene that's done in ridiculously cheesy slow motion. I'm generally not a big fan of slow motion but it can work if done effectively (it worked in The Hurt Locker). It didn't work here. There's also an unintentionally hilarious scene where the wife of a terrorist Chris Kyle shot claims he was carrying a Koran. Chris Kyle responds by saying (paraphrased) "I don't know what a Koran looks like but that was a gun." I get that there aren't a lot of Muslims in Texas but you don't have to ever see a Koran to know that it's a book...and he should know what books look like. Why couldn't he have just said "That man wasn't carrying a Koran. That was a gun." It would send the same message without making Chris sound like an idiot.
Besides that, Sienna Miller (the only other actor in the film with more than 10 minutes of screentime) doesn't have a lot to do, but she does decent enough as Chris Kyle's wife. I thought the PTSD portrayal was also solid, particularly a scene involving a dog, but the PTSD scenes are such a small portion of the film and it felt simplified by the end.
Sienna Miller in American Sniper
As for the ending, well I wasn't a fan of it. I won't explain it for those who don't know the actual story (though I imagine most people do at this point). I'm guessing Eastwood and co. thought it would be exploitative to show what could have been the film's climatic scene, but I feel it would have been a lot less exploitative than showing 9/11, because at least the unseen climax has to do with the main plot. I'll admit this is entirely subjective and some would feel that my ideal ending would be exploitative, but to me resorting to captions to explain the rest of the film is a cop out. In contrast, Foxcatcher (a film which also features Sienna Miller as a wife who gets upset on the phone) does show the climax and has a far more memorable ending in my opinion. I can respect the film's decision to end it how they did, but I don't agree with it.
Unless a film is aggressively bad, I never tell people to not see a movie because I'm always eager to hear someone else's thoughts, whether they be similar or different to mine. So if you wanna see American Sniper, go ahead and see it. I didn't care for it, but 73% of critics saw something in it that I didn't. To me, it lacked the emotional resonance of Eastwood's excellent war films, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, but it could've been worse.
Rating: 2/5
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