Apparently screenwriter Jason Hall, who previously wrote the terrible Ashton Kutcher flick Spread, didn't bother to look too deep into who Kyle was. Or perhaps he did, and that's why none of his lies are in the movie. He's claimed a number of things that have been proven to be completely phony; from gunning down looters in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina to finding material for WMD in Iraq. With so many lies to his name it's a wonder anybody believes in his rep as such a lethal sniper, a claim which is mainly verified by the shooter himself. Without his reputation there's little that makes Kyle's story any different from every other modern story about war and the plight of soldiers returning home to find they no longer fit in normal society or with their families. Those who care will find it tough to reconcile the Kyle in the movie with the reality; others will find it a familiar, occasionally moving, but ultimately directionless peek through the crosshairs at the personal costs of war.
Bulked up and with a thick scruff of facial hair, the gleaming Bradley Cooper is barely recognizable as Kyle. Behind a thick Texas drawl we're introduced to the marksman as he peers through the scope at a suspicious Iraqi woman who has just handed something that looks like a bomb to a child. If he takes the shot and is wrong he'll be crucified for it; but the alternative is just as bad. Does he shoot? The wait is tense, excruciatingly so. Unfortunately it's at that moment we're taken into a flashback to Kyle's childhood hunting bucks with his father and revealing his "gift" for shooting. Later, Kyle has a brief stint in the rodeo before news reports of a terrorist attack drive him to enlist as a SEAL. A sense of duty was something Kyle had in spades, but through the grind of SEAL training he found camaraderie, loyalty, and the need to protect his brothers-in-arms.
Okay, so now he's a soldier, but what's the movie about beyond him just gunning people down? Not long after training he meets the beautiful Taya (Sienna Miller, stuck in an endless string of "wife" roles) in a bar. They hit it off even though she's against dating self-involved soldiers. He takes offense to her comments but wins her over with his surprisingly disarming charm. They get married soon after, only to have the reception interrupted by "the call" that he's being deployed to Iraq.
There's the emotional hook we'd been waiting for. Every deployment seems to unravel Kyle a little bit further. The best scenes are the ones you'd expect from Eastwood and they mostly involve just Kyle alone with his rifle peering through the scope making life and death decisions. He's not portrayed as some glory hound or adrenaline junkie, he sees killing as simply a patriotic duty that needs to be fulfilled. But the toll on him is great, and each trip back seems to widen the emotional distance with Taya. The problem is that she never really registers as a full character in contrast to Kyle. She gets pregnant, has a couple of kids with Kyle, but that's it. In one tremendously overdone and ridiculous moment, she's screaming with joy about having a baby while he's getting shot at on the other end of the line. And yeah, she's basically wailing in the front of the hospital while he's trying to duck for cover. That level of unbelievable histrionics happens far too often in the homestead scenes.
It's been awhile since Eastwood has made a true action movie but the intensity and immersive nature of the war scenes show he's still got what it takes. There's nothing flashy about most of it; a scope, the shattering bang of a shot, and the brutal consequences. Eastwood has been dabbling in dramas and musicals for far too long and he seems to revel in the chance to get dirty again. A crazy battle in the midst of a raging sandstorm is one of Eastwood's most impressive visual sequences ever. He should do more of it. Problems arise with the creation of a fictional rival for Kyle, an Iraqi marksman who leaps across rooftops like a cat and snipes American soldiers with ease. He's there to help give the film more purpose than it actually has, but his presence doesn't really make sense. It always feels shoe-horned in and that's because it was. American Sniper needs the help; it needs the boost of a made-up villain because ultimately it doesn't seem to be about much. The family scenes don't carry the weight needed to balance out the war scenes and truly reflect the price Kyle paid in service to his country. And without that, what's the point of this film? Is it to portray Kyle as a great war hero and stone-cold killer? The kind of guy who wrote in his book that the only thing he regrets is not killing more? The reality is that American Sniper has its own patriotic duty, and that's to sand down the edges of who Chris Kyle was. Doesn't make for the most interesting character to follow, and it prevents us from truly learning about the man or the truth about the effects war had on him. Perhaps it was dealing so much death and getting praised for it that transformed Kyle into the man he turned out to be, but American Sniper isn’t interested in exploring any of that.
