Review of American Sniper (2014) by I8Yourreview — 04 May 2015

American Sniper has probably been criticized too harshly than it deserves, but then again it did NOT deserve an Oscar nomination either. As a fictional character-focus set withing a war film Eastwood's American Sniper is grade A, albeit lowbrow, cinema. However, this is not a fictional tale or at least its not supposed to be. THe Iraq war really happened and the main character Chris Kyle, who's book the film was based, was a real person whom met a tragic and ironic end.

Eastwood's portrayal of Chris Kyle as a saintly soldier who feels at war with himself when home and at home when at war is an overdone and oversimplified amalgamation of every war-hero protagonist of this genre of film. Chris Kyle's actual book and subsequent interviews reveal a much more conflicted, complex and interesting character. Kyle's allegiances, honor and duty stand in contrast and conflict with his biases. Not only does Kyle use slurs to describe Arabs in his book and elsewhere, he also makes no distinctions between combatants and civilians. Instead of exploring this aspect of Kyle and how it informs his experience, Eastwood decides to translates this contradiction in the most condescending of ways--Every Arab in his film is either evil or one dimensional: a psychopath, a corrupt interpreter, a sympathizer with--or combatant for--the enemy.

In the end Eastwood's American Sniper is country-friend propaganda, unapologetic in its revision of the Iraq War as a just war, not to mention a missed opportunity to tell the true story of a conflicted and complex soldier who was both a leader and pawn; hero and villain --someone who was human.