''American Sniper''

Ever since its release, American Sniper has garnered so much debate that it has effectively become the emblem of America’s political and cultural divisions around its recent history and its reaction to it. A brave work of unapologetic patriotism for some, a bellicose manifest of unthinking jingoism for others, American Sniper provokes reactions that, more than any other recent film, intrinsically link the viewer’s political beliefs with their aesthetic tastes.

Much of the controversy has revolved around the central character of Chris Kyle himself, a most colourful personage whose memoir of the same title and media appearances have led many on the left to accuse him of being a racist fascistic psychopath who supposedly bragged about stealing from Iraqi houses and killing people for doing the exact same thing after Hurricane Katrina devastated much of the American South. Whatever the truth may be, you will not find it here; the Chris Kyle filmed by Clint Eastwood and written by screenwriter Jason Hall is a restrained and sometimes inscrutable man, whose apparent simplicity suggests a more complicated personality of which we only get vague hints and no definitive confirmation. Clint Eastwood isn’t so much interested by the real human being Chris Kyle was as he is by the Americana he represents.

His early life, told in flashbacks quite literally triggered by his first kill, is as simple as a country music video: Raised in a traditional patriarchal household to be a “sheepdog” protecting the “sheep” of this world against the “wolves”, he transfers his cowboy dreams to the Navy SEALs after catching his girlfriend cheating on him for not being there enough for her and seeing news reports of a terrorist attack against an American embassy. After a brief training montage that makes the SEALs training look more like a summer camp than the mercilessly brutal trial by fire it reportedly is, he meets his future wife Taya (Sienna Miller), engages in some man-to-tough-gal drinking banter with her, dates her, has off-screen sex with her, witnesses 9/11 on live TV, marries her and ships off to Iraq. Most of those scenes follow a fairly routine pattern of plot beats that rarely let Taya grow beyond what Hollywood typically expects of a military wife: support, anxiety, pregnancy, frustration at his absence… Her character, like most of Kyle’s early life, is painted in broad strokes that allow basic audience connection through easily identifiable traits. Hall’s screenplay, aided by Eastwood’s typical subdued colour scheme (which in more recent films had reached levels of tedious dourness), portrays a rural America that’s as idealized as the one seen in Howard Hawks’s Sergeant York (to which the film has often been compared) but not quite as rich in character and prevented from pandering to sentiment – as a Nicholas Sparks novel adaptation might – by its unceasing focus on Kyle’s actions and reactions and the silent activity behind Bradley Cooper’s eyes as he does so. The downside to the uncomplicated nature of these scenes is that Chris Kyle is essentially the only well-rounded character within them, surrounded by stock figures with which viewers are familiar enough to instinctively attach themselves to.

We then return to Chris Kyle’s first kill – a child carrying a grenade for his mother, followed by the mother herself when she picks it up for him (in real life, there was no child). In contrast to the fashionable ear-splitting sonority and non-motivated camera movements that have become the norm for modern war films, Eastwood shoots his action scenes with the steadiness, readability and careful planning of the old-school veteran that he is: Most shots last over three seconds, and framed with a moderately large range that balances human scale (point-of-view shots through Kyle’s sniper lens, medium shots among marines) with the sense of omniscience brought by crane, helicopter and low-angle shots. This makes the fights tense and exciting, but also makes it easy for the audience to process and normalize the death and destruction they witness. Even when showing soldiers dying swift and bloody deaths or rounding up terrified civilian women and calling them “bitches”, Eastwood sublimates the horrors of war into something exciting and aesthetically appealing. Nothing out of the ordinary at first glance, as François Truffaut’s truism that filmmakers cannot help but draw thrills out of war scenes has rarely been proven wrong. But then you compare these scenes to Kyle’s homecomings, and notice how the difficult differentiation between civilians and combatants – evidenced by Kyle’s first kill and later scenes involving a man who turns out to be an informant and stockpile for insurgents – is juxtaposed with more easily identifiable black-clad villains (a deadly sniper named Mustafa and a sadistic Al-Qaeda enforcer rather unimaginatively nicknamed “The Butcher”, both loosely based on real people Kyle never encountered) to the point where the former get supplanted by the latter. Then Eastwood’s intent – as well as his interest in Kyle’s character – becomes clearer.

The only person to ever express doubts over the Iraq War’s worthiness is Kyle’s friend and comrade-in-arms Marc Lee (something the latter’s widow insists he never did). Kyle’s patriotic motives for going to war are neither criticized nor challenged. And yet the effect of that war on his psyche and his relationship with his wife constitutes his character’s primary source of conflict. The righteous indignation and gung-ho confidence he displayed prior to his first tour of duty are replaced by a quiet unease and empty smiles as soon as he returns home for leave. As Taya is quick to notice, his mind is still in Iraq. When Marc confides his doubts in him and a letter further expressing them is read at his funeral¹, Kyle’s reactions, even when clearly voiced – “That letter killed him.” – are difficult to fathom. While it is clear he is disturbed by Marc’s doubts, the degree to which he may or may not share them never is. It isn’t too hard to see how someone more acclimated to the simple, primal kill-or-be-killed, us-versus-them nature of military conflict would find it preferable to the complications and mysteries of everyday civilian life. But in addition to running the risk of accidentally insulting the many complex human beings that risk their lives every day for their countries, such an interpretation offers only a limited view into how Chris Kyle represents post-9/11 America.

For that is undoubtedly what Clint Eastwood and Jason Hall have made him. A good-looking rural Texan, raised with old-fashioned values and an equal love of God and country, whose instinctive response to violence towards innocent fellow citizens is an equal, retaliatory violence judged righteous by its cause. These values serve him well in combat but they are put to the test by the manipulation of civilians by Islamic terrorists and the natural defensiveness that comes from subjugated people who find everything they know attacked by foreign elements. It is therefore not surprising that he would concentrate his attention on a boogeyman-like character such as Mustafa, not only his opposite number (as Eastwood makes rather simplistically clear by showing Mustafa preparing his next hit while his wife and baby sit by his side, shortly after Kyle is seen with his own wife and baby) but also a mysterious villain devoid of any personality or humanity (he never speaks a word), solely characterized by his lethality and his dark good looks; in other words, a perfect embodiment for a faceless evil that must be terminated for good to triumph. That’s how it works in most western stories: Conflict ends when the designated main antagonist who embodies what the protagonists are fighting is killed, captured or otherwise disabled. But that’s not how real conflicts work; killing Bin Laden, while a good thing, was not the crippling blow against Al-Qaeda or Islamic terrorism that we wanted it to be. Islamic terrorism will not simply cease to exist after we kill enough terrorist leaders, because the idea behind that terrorism cannot be killed.

Thus this movie’s Chris Kyle follows a character arc that mirrors that of many Americans after 9/11: Instinctively supportive of retaliatory military action he actively participates in, he bears its psychological consequences, both on and off the field. Defensive patriotism is gradually tempered by uncertainty, as it becomes clear this War on Terror will be long, taxing and potentially endless. By the end of the film, the designated bad guys have been killed but the war is still going on, and its cost in human life and well-being has been made clear. All that remains is a question still debated today: Was it worth it?

All the film has to say on that matter, indeed all it has to say about the Iraq War and the War on Terror, is contained in Bradley Cooper’s complex, multifaceted performance, his ever-so-slightly absent look when affirming his clear conscience to his VA psychiatrist (“I’m willing to meet my Creator and answer for every shot that I took”). What troubles him, he claims, is the fact that he didn’t save more of his comrades. In the classical Hollywood form dear to Eastwood, this moment’s importance and meaning would have been signified by, perhaps, a musical cue or a slow zoom on the actor’s face as they give a screen-dominating performance². That is not quite so here. Cooper’s upper torso is at the center of the frame, his words are convincing enough but delivered with matter-of-fact modesty, his eyes giving away no unequivocal emotion. His more relaxed demeanour after spending time with disabled veterans certainly indicates he found peace in continuing his job as a helper to his brothers-in-arms through different means, but the overall worthiness of the war he fought in still remains up for the viewer to decide.

More than a political Rorschach test, Bradley Cooper’s acting typifies a kind of American masculinity that is as celebrated as it is indirectly questioned; as active and confident as Kyle is during each deployment, he carries himself in a slightly stiff and uncomfortable manner when back in civilian life, as if reigning in his reflexes until the situation appears to call for them, such as when Taya’s water breaks in the car or when he mistakes a dog playing with his son for an attack). Much like Channing Tatum in Foxcatcher, his body language only feels truly alive and in its element when it’s actively doing what it has been trained and educated to do. Whatever one may think of the real Chris Kyle, the Iraq War, the War on Terror or war in general, the most important thing to take away from Bradley Cooper’s Chris Kyle is this: To commit oneself to fighting a persistent and ever-shifting evil means sacrificing not only one’s personal safety but also the peace of mind we all take for granted.

Clint Eastwood’s intelligent, even-handed direction – certainly livelier than Flags Of Our Fathers, Gran Torino or the stultifying Invictus – elevates American Sniper above the simple-minded flag-waving its detractors have accused it of being, and even manages to sublimate some of the clichés in Jason Hall’s screenplay: When fellow SEAL Biggles tells Kyle about buying an engagement ring (“From those savages?” asks an amused Kyle in the film’s only instance of displaying casual racism on his part), you know from experience that he’s just signed his death warrant. Yet Eastwood’s construction of the events that follow that exchange twist the narrative in a way that makes its conclusion all the more surprising. It’s a pity, however, that the placement of Chris Kyle at the front and center of practically every scene has the side-effect of rendering Biggles and every other peripheral character either one-dimensional or fully dependent on him. Accusations of racism towards Iraqis, while fundamentally inaccurate, are nevertheless fueled by a lack of characterization on their part. Kyle’s Iraqi translator, codenamed Johnny Walker in real life but unnamed in the film, only ever fulfills his job as a translator without doing anything else. Taya’s character would have benefited from scenes where she had agency of her own, independently of her interactions with her husband; seeing her trying to raise kids alone and having to explain their father’s job and the risks he takes to them would have made her ordeal all the more appreciable. Also underwritten is the amount of time Kyle spent with disabled veterans. While the camaraderie between them feels genuine, his transition from uncertainty to peace is insufficiently brought to light, making his final scene – where he leaves his house to spend time with PTSD-stricken veteran Eddie Ray Routh (unnamed in the film), after making rather pointed promises of sex to his wife and games to his children – insufficiently contextualized. The tragedy of his death at the hands of one of the very people he was working for and in whose presence he found purpose doesn’t fully register.

More nuanced than many left-wing critics have given it credit for, yet unapologetic in its patriotism, American Sniper benefits most prominently from Bradley Cooper’s magnificently understated portrayal of Chris Kyle as a representative of challenged American bravado. Eastwood focalizes on that performance with results that sometimes border on genuinely thought-provoking material, but at the expense of other characters and possibilities that could have made it the definitive Iraq War film.

¹According to Lee’s widow, that letter is real but its contents are selectively edited in a way that suggests doubts her husband did not have.

²A good example would be Morgan Freeman’s delivery of Red’s “rehabilitated” speech before the parole board at the end of The Shawshank Redemption.