American Sniper – Film Review

Chris Kyle is an American Hero. His story is told in a very direct tone to really ground him. Though the film does keep the story simple to basically a classic western, it does show the casualties of war physically and emotionally. You saw Chris Kyle become a ghost shell of himself over the course of the film. As this film was Academy Award Nominated it had a lot of gravitas in being as historically accurate as possible and portraying Chris Kyle in the simplistic manner. Though Chris Kyle did have a lot of personal appearances on talk shows while promoting his book and telling his war stories. The movie skips over that factor to focus on himself as a person.

I need you… to be human again. I need you here

The main emotional aspect that I came away with is the importance of life and when and when not to pull the trigger. Doing your job to protect your country is the number 1 priority of any solider. But, with taking any life that can be very traumatic in knowing you’re ending a life of not only men but women and children as well that are just doing what they are told by these terrorist groups. War is rough and things can happen. You just have to heal over time to get back to your emotional self.

Through the scenes of each tour he served it became confusing on when we were in the timeline between 2001 and 2013. I would have liked some year knowledge so I was able to feel the impact of how long he was in the Middle East. Each tour is a great self contained story to the overarching show down between Chris and the terrorist. I did like the fact the movie didn’t feel dated in over-telling the decade, it just needed some more context clues to when we were in the story.

Bradley Cooper does an excellent job of portraying Chris Kyle as does Sienna Miller as Taya Kyle. You can definitely tell how much research both Bradley & Sienna put into portraying those roles accurately. They had great chemistry on screen that was believable. Clint Eastwood does a good overall job in setting the scenes and telling the story as a western to which he is best known for as an actor. Even though the main protagonist and antagonist never met in person you can see the conflict clearly and the battle over power in the Middle East.

Overall the emotional impact of the war really does show on Chris Kyle through the movie with the solider’s he has lost, the people who he has seen kill and the people he had killed over time taking a toll. There were some great tense scenes in the film that made you question if Chris was going to make it out alive or not. Clint did a good job of telling his story to the audience.

7.5/10