Firstly, this movie doesn't have any conceivable storyline.
On the factual basis, Iraq war had questionable goals. The war was committed on false accusation that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The war and killing of so many innocent people happened only to reveal that it was not true. In this movie, such a war was attempted to be glorified through extremely partial vantage point. The movie portrays the people who went to another country to kill others as superhumans and people who fought to protect their own country on their own land as demons. There is no gray area in the depiction. This is imprudent and ridiculous.
The broken story-line also has a lot of moral loopholes. Can a Sniper-man just decide to join the land troopers? Can they just suddenly start interrogating the civilians and then leave them unsecured to be killed?
The movie has only one clear message - God didn't create all the people equal. If you are not American, your life has very little value (if any) in comparison to an American.
I'm a big fan of American war movies, but this was horrible. It's basically Team America World Police without the self-awareness. Every American is a hero. Every Iraqi is a 'savage'. The guy invading a foreign country is a 'patriot' and the guys defending their country are 'terrorists'. No shades of grey whatsoever.
It runs way too long, which would't be a bad thing if it was interesting, but it isn't. It's the same old story of a guy changing while away at war, except he was unlikeable at the beginning and unlikeable at the end. Not that compelling.
And anyone from outside the American South will probably need subtitles as Cooper mumbled every line. Just take every mumbled word you didn't quite catch and replace it with ''Murica' and you get the idea.
Hell ya! Invade a poor country just because they don't like you! Kill them like savages and make movies to glorify your crimes through a movie like this. Prove everyone from your enemy country is a daemon including kids and woman, kill them before they even try to protect themselves. Movie tries to connect 9/11 incident with Iraq war, like we don't know the history or their news channels are successful to brainwash rest of the world too! This shows how this country is killing people since ages be it Red Indians, Germans, Russians, Vietnamese or now Arabs. Their quest to remain world power will never stop, they justify their war crimes with movies like this but please don't raise your voice else they question your Patriotism, this word "Patriotism" is the most misused term in current civilization. I am Completely disgusted after watching this movie and feeling sad for all innocent souls.
First, let me say that Eastwood's direction, Cooper's acting and the screenplay are all competent. Were this film a wholly fictional account of a warrior with special skills put in the service of his comrades it would be quite serviceable, though no more than that.
However, here was an opportunity to show the complexities of a man hailed as an American hero; and by complexities, I mean the thoroughly odious aspects of Chris Kyle's character. The man enjoyed killing people, regarding his targets as savages, and he bragged about killing looters in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina - even if he didn't, because we don't know for certain, what kind of man declares proudly his murderous inclinations? In short, he was far from a good man. Dismally, you would never know this from the simple-minded depiction of him as an all American Hero in Eastwood's film.
Likewise, there is not a shred of awareness in the film that the US involvement in Iraq might have been illegal and was certainly catastrophic for the Iraqis. The film's approach is to display every Iraqi man, woman and even child as intent on murdering "good" American troops and therefore deserving of their fate, both at the end of Kyle's rifle and under the boot of American troops generally.
I don't know what Eastwood was thinking when he made this film. Perhaps he saw an easy way to make money by appealing to the misplaced patriotism of some Americans. What I do know is that this is a disgusting film.
This is absolutely terrible cinema. Not only that, it is terrible propaganda, too. People already have bad picture of Americans and their stupidity and boy this sure helps. Religious main character who is so patriotic he needs to defend the best country in the world ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PLANET, just to call melodramatic phone calls to his wife in the middle of shootout.
Seriously, this is exactly how low you can get. I did watch Warrior (2011) and know how awful American dream movies can be, but holy damn, they did everything they could to buy all the casual and murican viewers to their side. E V E R Y T H I N G.
We even have 9/11 footage and people yelling alluha akbar on the background. Shame on every person who was in the making of this, and people who like this, please, please, try not to ruin this world any more.
Chris Kyle stated he wanted to fight terrorists, but instead they sent him to Iraq, oops wrong country, no terrorists there! - (that's Afghanistan), just some guys defending their 'weapons of mass destruction', oops, there weren't any, so just guys defending their country against invasion by a foreign force. Of course they are going to attack you and try and to blow you up! I walked out of the movie disgusted - Chris also brags about killing at least a score of looters in New Orleans in a blog or his book, did this ever some out in the movie at the end - tough price to pay for stealing, death, wow. In this case snipers are cowards, not a fair fight! Afghanistan was a justifiable war. WW2 was a justifiable war. WW1 was a justifiable war. The war on Terror is a justifiable war. Iraq was an unjustifiable war!
I went to see this movie as I have read the book also. I was expecting to see an intense action packed movie. To my complete disappointment this is simply sad. Sad in every way i could possibly think about. It is neither an action movie nor a drama, just a very weak attempt at both. The action scenes are too spread out and blended in with the a brief overview of a gut-wrenching Post Traumatic Stress Disorder soldier with a crying wife. It is Clint Eastwood's interpretation of old fashioned US patriotism and in reality it is just a mild portrait of abusive soldiering and bullying of local population. You are neither captured by the excitement of a proper war picture or feel any emotions moved by the family drama.
It portrays a simple minded Chris Kyle who is conflicted by a sense of patriotism and what his colleagues and family think about the righteousness of the war. We all know that war sucks and that soldiers are pretty messed up in the head. As if his family drama wasn't enough we are bombarded by his pseudo-edginess as a result of trauma. Clint Eastwood is too old to understand what a modern movie is all about. He does not know how to use visual effects to his advantage at all. I went too see a movie about the accomplishments of the deadliest sniper in US military history and ended up seeing a sad sad movie.
I am a big fan of American war movies like platoon or black hawk down. However, this picture was just simply garbage. Do not waste any money on this. Probably the worst performance of Bradley Cooper ever and shows that Clint Eastwood has no idea how to bring out a war epic onto the large screen. The book had loads of material for a cool movie which is probably the saddest thing ever. Clint Eastwood has successfully ravished it into what seems like low-budget piece of rubbish. The movie gives you a sense that you have been robbed by the box office. Give me my money back!
As much as I have enjoyed Eastwood's earlier work, American Sniper I believe is his weakest so far. The story is flawed from the very beginning. A true story about a Texan wannabe cowboy, Kyle, who after witnessing 9/11 decides to join SEAL and kill bad guys in Iraq! WHAT?!? Iraq which has nothing to do with 9/11? Or did he just assume that since "all Muslims are terrorist" what difference does it make if i kill them in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya? Well, the buck doesn't stop here - and this is where i am assuming Eastwood took the liberty of giving the sniper competition between kyle and his rival arch enemy the maximum amount of screen time making it almost the main plot. Which does build some amount of tension but soon dissipates within a new york minute with a one-inch-punchy climax. Cant even begin to talk about kyle's relationship with his wife and children because it is so amateurishly executed unable to fully express his dilemma before and after the war. Cooper did make a genuine effort, his accent being the most convincing.
Clint Eastwood was always a patriotic fellow. Nonetheless he used to be able to draw a picture having in mind not only the "best country of the world" (??) but the other side of the story too. It is enough to say that he was the one to shoot "Flag of Our Fathers" and "Letters from Iwo Jima" almost simultaneously. In "American Sniper" though there is only one motto: "US rules. F... the rest". Having that in mind this is no movie but an ordinary propaganda piece destined to disappear in the oblivious and vast ocean of mediocrity. Eastwood is not even able to properly capture the inner demon of a man condemned or willing to kill more than 150 people as a sniper - which means, having them pretty close due to the power of his telescopic lenses. A shame.
I had two major problems with this movie.
The first would be that the wife character has no personality, no job, no family and no inner life. She is totally flat and all we see her do is drink some shots, read a magazine in the middle of the day and wear lingerie. After that she gets married and becomes a baby incubator for the main character. I found this one dimensional female portrayal to be so ridiculous it was offensive. If women are going to be portrayed in movies they should be more than flat cut-outs from Esquire magazine. The second part of the movie was supposed to focus on their relationship, which is couldn't do because the wife wasn't a real person.
My second problem was the child torture and death scenes. I understand that war is violent and that this movie was trying to 'realistically' portray the horror of war but I think that could have been achieved by the first two death scenes. The second child death scene was overkill and made the movie unpleasant to watch. There are far better ways to portray the horrors of war that by showing graphic violence against children. I didn't find it entertaining at all.
This movie is unrealistic, unpleasant to watch, has crappy character development and couldn't suspend disbelief for me. The editing was terrible, the story didn't flow and again, unless you like watching kids get tortured and killed I would skip this one. My husband is in the military and loves war movies and he hated this one just as much as I did. I would have given it zero stars if I could.
Another pro war movie based on lies to keep the public supporting these inhumane and illegal wars. Eastwood does the bidding of the military industrial complex in this pro-war propaganda filled movie designed to make the clueless masses shout 'hoo-rah' and support more wars overseas.
So many truths and facts that have come out about these wars and Chris Kyle are left out of the movie making it seem like war is a good thing. War is never a good thing.
This movie is not worth your time or money in my opinion. Until a movie comes out that details the facts that expose that these wars are based on lies and who the real puppet masters are sending our kids to die for a flag that has been torn to shreds by a runaway and criminal government then don't watch Hollywood propaganda.
Glorifying a cowardly murderer in order to encourage impressionable children to join the world's biggest terrorist cell is quite disgusting.
The film portrays the religion of patriotism, the only religion to still revel in human sacrifice, as if it is acceptable.
Patriotism is the refuge of the cowardly, the stupid and the evil. This killer is in all three categories.
It's unfortunate that American children don't realise that the rest of the world pities their plight as brainwashed, brain-dead victims of the world's rogue state.
Why couldn't they make a good film about the only known American hero, the amazingly courageous Chelsea Manning? Now that might help cure some of the huge damage that the US terror has done to the reputation of America.
I have read multiple reviews here calling the guy a hero. Why? Because he was an American killing people in their own country illegally? Most of the reviews that love this movie are from Americans who just seem to carry on about the heroic man. There is no evidence other than his own word that he didn't kill many unarmed civilians, but we are supposed to believe his word.
What a coincidence that the kid he doesn't kill has a bible. More American southern style Christian propaganda too. I'm from a western country and not religious, but still the glaring hypocrisy and contrived bits like that stood out. I really think someone played with the truth a bit for the child carrying a bible bit. Calling people protecting their own country savages also doesn't help your cause. Especially when tens of thousands of unarmed civilians were killed during the real war in the middle east and their families have no recourse.
Yet here they make out that the "other side" has no empathy and doesn't see from a different perspective. Any wonder this movie will be so popular when American's would still high five individuals who abused people at Gitmo (who had no trial and were mostly only protecting their own country). Mostly released after the pictures of their abuse came out (under the radar too like a country with empathy would do- sarcasm)..
I was looking forward to watching American Sniper, wow was I disappointed to find it was nothing more than a drama about PTSD told from his wife's perspective. Hard to believe it was Directed by Clint Eastwood.
Don't waste your money on the movie or the DVD. If you haven't seen "Shooter" (
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0822854/?ref_=fn_al_tt_4 ) with Mark Walhberg its a much better choice.
The casting was terrible, story bounced around a lot, and the entire thing was just poorly written, directed, and conceived. What should have been a great patriotic movie about an American Hero, Chris Kyle, was turned into an anti war propaganda piece that tarnished a great mans reputation and legacy.