A gun-toting religious fanatic waging a holy war. Sound familiar? Maybe when talking about the Charlie Hebdo massacre, not so much Chris Kyle, self-branded "most lethal sniper in U.S. history" and subject of Best Picture nominee "American Sniper." Kyle called Iraqis "savages" that were "fun" to kill in his memoir about shooting up Eye-raq, all while sporting a Crusader's Cross tattoo. That he was in the U.S. military's employ while blunt about his racist convictions could have been a teachable moment about the the war on terror's hypocritical lexicon, but supporting our troops, one-sided solemnity for the dead, and capitalism's reverence for bestsellers meant that wasn't going to happen. And that's even after putting aside the larger picture—a war sold on lies for oil, destroying an entire country with no connection to the act of terror it was supposedly avenging—was a form of terrorism in itself.
Director Clint Eastwood, who scolded a chair representing President Barack Obama at the Republican National Convention with one of Dirty Harry's famous threats against a minority, doesn't initially seem like someone who would give this story anything but a victory lap. Then again, he did sneak a few antiwar messages into that speech and has a history of confounding his ostensibly Republican leanings with shades of cinematic ambiguity. Unfortunately, Eastwood and Bradley Cooper, who plays Kyle, insist the movie isn't pro- or antiwar and shouldn't be used to argue as such, focusing instead on the "reality" of a soldier's work, but you can't stay neutral on a moving bullet. Or can ya? Let's find out.
We start off through the crosshairs with a sniper's conundrum: Does the mother and child in this country we carpet bombed need to be neutralized as a threat to our occupation? The answer is delayed by a flashback to a childhood hunting scene a la "The Deer Hunter," a supposedly anti-Vietnam movie which also turned out to be more of an anti-enemy combatant movie with a side of PTSD. Kyle's father (Ben Reed) gives a Bible-hewn wolf, sheep, and protector speech reminiscent of the "Team America: World Police" bit about dicks, pussies, and assholes. Though seen as mildly abusive, possibly "sons carry the sins of the father" moralizing, the rest of the movie more or less justifies dad, including the 30-is-the-new-20 recruitment ad that follows Kyle's 1998 U.S. embassy bombings-inspired wake-up call, later emboldened by 9/11. Peppering the training montage is a meet-cute straight out of a Nicholas Sparks movie, uncomfortably splicing sniping and sex together but without any intended commentary on libidinal aggression.
Eventually we get back to the opening conundrum and Kyle staring down a mother and child he sees as a threat, calling them (and presumably, every other Iraqi civilian, none of whom he sees as innocent) an "evil like I've never seen before," and we're not exactly meant to think he's wrong (in fact, the "savages" line comes up later as well, and we're given evidence to justify it). Kyle's in Fallujah, site of a few American war crimes, but the first fear-struck amputee we see is a victim of Ahmad Abd al-isawi, known as "The Butcher" (Mido Hamada), an enforcer for an enemy sniper, who later turns up to torture a family in broad daylight. While the movie acquits itself on its portrayal of PTSD and the way this country chews up and spits out soldiers, the rest is a "Call of Duty"-esque rivalry with a one-note guerrilla sniper. Any shades of ambiguity would have been revelatory in a war film from the 1950s if they snuck by Cold War codes, but it's 2015, so what gives?
