American Sniper (2014): **

In a flashback with a young Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) with his father Wayne (Ben Reed), Wayne states there are three types of people in the world: sheep, wolves and sheepdogs. The sheep deny there is evil and cower when the wolves come along to bully them, the sheepdogs are aggressive towards the wolves to protect the flock. Chris Kyle identifies himself as a sheepdog and decides to join the Armed Forces after the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings. Kyle becomes a legend in Iraq, an angel of protection for the soldiers and an angel of death for the insurgents, clocking in over 160 confirmed kills during his four tours of Iraq. Chris Kyle becomes further embroiled in the Iraqi War, much to his wife Taya’s (Sienna Miller) distress and concern that she will lose him. 

Chris Kyle was a fairly complex, troubled person in real-life; you need only to look at some of the claims he made to see that. American Sniper does not even touch on this and focuses squarely on his time during active tour, contrasting with a few scenes with his worried wife and Chris struggling to readjust at home, longing to return to the battlefield. A strong case can be made that Kyle was not a particularly nice man, according to those who read his memoirs, who described killing as ‘fun’ and calling his enemies ‘savages’. Chris Kyle in American Sniper is a proud patriot, defender of God and his country, and a kind, polite American citizen. In portraying Kyle in a glorifying light, director Clint Eastwood and writer Jason Hall have essentially created another ‘Cowboys vs Indians’ movie, or in this case it’s ‘Chris Kyle vs Mustafa’, Chris’s rival insurgent sniper. There is a sense of irony to be had when the audience sees the American soldiers marching along the war-wrecked streets with the Punisher symbol adorned on their helmets and vehicles.

Bradley Cooper portrays Chris Kyle well; Cooper has the thousand-yard stare down to perfection, although he seems more at ease when he gets to play Kyle as the charming husband. Sienna Miller does her best with her role as Taya, who spends the majority of the film expressing concern for Chris and listening to Chris engaging in gun-fights whilst on the phone with him. The highlight of Tom Stern’s cinematography is a gunfight which becomes engulfed by a sandstorm, which perfectly ramps up the tension during the scene. However, it is mostly dirty yellow and grey tones throughout combined with scope shots, looking down on the potential targets and following the on-ground soldiers. 

American Sniper will be enjoyed by those who love to cheer on for the home team, but it is neither compelling enough nor complex enough for the rest of us, bar perhaps a fine performance by Bradley Cooper.