For a moment in time, I was convinced Clint Eastwood lost his touch in making quality entertainment, dare I bring up Jersey Boys? Depending on who you are, American Sniper will either inspire or re-energize your patriotism and love for our amazing country. On the other side of coin, you will have folks who think a little differently about the subject matter at hand. In the mean time, let us discuss the movie and not the sociopolitical aspects of its controversy, shall we?
American Sniper tells the story of real life American military hero Chris Kyle, a Texan and cowboy turned NAVY Seal after the attacks on 9/11. Portraying Kyle is Bradley Cooper who seemed to have gained a fair amount of weight and an impressive Texas accent for the role. Portraying Kyle’s wife was the beautiful Sienna Miller. The majority of the film delves into their personal life and the struggles and hardships they face while Chris deals with a crusader like mindset along with his foreseeable plummet into Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
What we get is a jump around of his life without wasting much time on his back-story and a fairly underwhelming script. Thankfully, we are given incredible performances by the movie’s leads which pack-mules the films peculiar pacing and writing and trademark cinematography from Tom Stern. There was no lacking effort in the making of the true feel of the film’s mostly desert setting and the grueling elements that these soldiers had to face. Another redeeming quality points to the heart pounding and sometimes disturbing visuals of the horrors of war and the action sequences that correlated.
Nearly every scene with Kyle and the soldiers on their missions made the cut for “best parts of movie”, but at the same time, the film suffers from a lack of established characters which doesn’t provide any ample time to connect with those that are not Cooper or Miller and they try to capitalize on the relationships that Chris Kyle once had, but it falls flat bringing an in and out approach to their scenes. On the other hand, Sienna Miller as Taya Kyle was a pleasant surprise for me personally. I suspected Miller to portray the by the books military wife, which to some degree she did, but at the same time, the garnered enough tricks to make a convincing and honest character. There is a scene where she is on the phone with Chris during a shootout and it is just heartbreaking to watch and all the credit went to Sienna Miller for bringing out the true emotion of most of her scenes.
I can’t stay reticent about what stayed in my head as I was watching the film and that is of the lacking facts that could have and should have made this film great, instead it good. In biopics, I expect the directors and writers to give us the good, the bad and the ugly….
Hehe get it, because Clint Eastwood….
Instead, we were given a subdued and minimized telling of Chris Kyle’s story and the side that would quantifiably change the tone of the film for the better. I understand this is not a history class and nor should it be, but all great biopics are not afraid to make the good guys human. It was done incredibly with films like Ray or Ali or The Social Network and did not waver because of it, it shocks me Eastwood would be so tame about an imperfect man like Kyle or at least not outline the heavier stuff that most of us do not know about.
In the end, it’s definitely a “good” film, but it could have been ever better. It suffers from a weird back and fourth style pacing and poor writing. It looks beautiful and the action and story is one everyone should see. It gets a bonus for not glorifying war or handing out political opinions to the audience which many war based films can lose the audience.
I give American Sniper a 6.5/10 for Cooper’s incredible portrayal of Kyle and also because the film was beautiful to look at.
Categories: FILM, Movie Reviews, REVIEWS
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