Review of American Sniper (2014) by Zedzded — 09 Jan 2015

Mediocre... Mildly entertaining, nothing new or very fresh here. A good performance by Bradley Cooper but let's face it, the lead character is fairly one dimensional so that wasn't exactly a stretch.

And I don't feel the direction was especially crisp either. However it's clear we are supposed to view Kyle as an all American hero. While his counterpart, the other sniper who does exactly the same job as him is patently a savage.

I read Kyle's book before I saw this movie and I know Eastwood has selectively ignored Kyle's complete psychopathy which was readily apparent from his own words in the book and instead attempted to portray him as an empathetic family man which I never felt from reading Kyle's words. This man loved to kill people, pure and simple. That was his motivation.

Live by the sword, die by the sword... And I could hardly feel any emotion or sympathy for someone who clearly took pleasure from killing others.