MOVIE REVIEW - AMERICAN SNIPER Release Date: 22/01/15 Rating: MA15+ Director(s): Clint Eastwood Stars: Bradley Cooper, Siena Miller, Luke Grimes, Kyle Gallner, Sam Jaeger, Jake McDorman, Kier O’Donnell & Cory Hardrict Run Time: 132 min’s Trailer: bit.ly/15t0fdC Score (out of 10): 7½ Well, first things first - Cooper is nothing short of phenomenal as former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle - a Texan considered the deadliest marksman in U.S. military history. And although a win would be surprising, Cooper’s 3rd Oscar Acting nom in as many years is very, very well deserved. Over 4 tours of duty in Iraq spanning 7 or 8 years, Kyle had 160 confirmed kills out of a probable 255; & was so good at his job that the marines he was tasked to protect dubbed him “LEGEND”. American Sniper feels like a hybrid of 2 other (& overall superior) war films of this millennium - Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down & Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker. There’s plenty of action; & we see just how tough warfare is in built-up urban areas like in BHD. And then as we saw in the brilliant THL, there’s also the struggle of going back to a ‘normal’, civilian life on return from duty. It’s almost impossible to imagine how any of these servicemen & women assimilate back into society after what they witnessed &/or were expected to do. Unfortunately, Cooper is not only the standout but he’s also the only really good thing about this flick. Everything else was done better in the aforementioned other films. HOWEVER, my main issue was how inaccurately Kyle & his real life views were actually portrayed; & how this greatly undermines the movie. In the film we see him as a patriotic Texan who only shot when he absolutely had to. But in his autobiography on which the movie was based as well as other direct quotes, he’s a guy with no regrets other than he didn’t kill more Muslims (or ‘savages’ as he refers to them). His views are his views, & I respect the no. of US servicemen & women’s lives he protected in his job ... But don’t portray him as a saint when he clearly wasn’t. He also claimed to have punched Jesse “The Body” Ventura - a former elite military guy, 80’s wrestler & Minnesota Governor - after Ventura allegedly dissed the US war effort in Iraq. A jury subsequently found in favour of Ventura, determining that none of Kyle’s claims re this were true. And if that wasn’t enough for director Eastwood to whitewash, another claim from Kyle (thus far unsubstantiated) had him sitting on the roof of the New Orleans Superdome after Hurricane Katrina, shooting dozens of looters. #Crazy I appreciate that we’re talking mainstream Hollywood here; & none of this negative stuff would have made for nearly as commercial a film as it’s turned out to be - certainly not the film that’s broken almost every January/US Winter B.O. record around. BUT, after initially having come out of this flick quite positively a fortnight ago, to have dug deeper & discovered what’s a tad closer to the truth, I feel considerably ripped off. Cooper’s onscreen efforts make up the bulk of my score here folks. Without him, AS would be at best a 3/10.
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 03:12:20 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015