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| /US Magazine |
For
a while, American audiences had been reluctant to embrace cinematic accounts of
the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. Keeping in mind the lack in quantity: of those
that did get made, Kathryn Bigelow’s The
Hurt Locker (2009) grossed just $15 million domestically and stands – and
likely will for some time – as the lowest-grossing Best Picture winner ever,
while the Tommy Lee Jones vehicle In the
Valley of Elah (2007) made just $6 million. That was, from the war's start for a good decade, the consistent story.
But
the tide is starting to turn, not only in these films’ profitability but in
their size and their content. Peter Berg’s brotherhood-themed Lone Survivor grossed among the top 25
films of 2013, and now, Clint Eastwood’s American
Sniper is set to fare even better.
American Sniper
hovers around challenging questions, but is quite content to keep them in the
background. American audiences appear ready to come out in full force for an
Iraq War film that is unabashedly patriotic, one that neglects the nuance of a Hurt Locker or the bleakness of a Valley of Elah. It is an ode to those
that are innately driven to serve and fight for their country, regardless of what,
exactly, that means. Jason Hall is credited with adapting the memoir of Chris
Kyle – dubbed the “most lethal” sniper in the history of the U.S. Army, and
played here by a bulked-up Bradley Cooper – for the screen, in the kind of
broad, decades-spanning biopic that is most Eastwood-ian, even as directors
like Steven Spielberg and Ava DuVernay have recently found value in adopting a narrower
method. No, in every sense of the word, American
Sniper takes a meat-and-potatoes approach.
American Sniper
is problematic as a movie for several reasons, least of which are
related to its perceived-conservative politics. For a liberal viewer, the casual
placement of guns around Kyle’s home with children present likely raises a red
flag – but really, it demonstrates an apt attention to detail from Eastwood, a
nice bit of character shading. And the film’s patriotism must be viewed in the
context of its protagonist, whose single-mindedness is not (completely) lost on
Cooper or Eastwood. I don’t think American
Sniper really intends to be anti- or pro-war, and truthfully, the film
plays it so safe that it fails to make a convincing argument on either end.
This is, not unlike The Hurt Locker
or a density of Iraq War fiction to come out in the past few years – Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, The Yellow Birds and Redeployment most prominently – a
document of the soldier, of the toll of war and the inner-turmoil that is met
with ongoing patriotic duty.
Most
severely, the movie’s clumsiness in certain areas undercuts its attempts at
provocation in others. Whenever Chris learns of an anti-American attack on the
television, Cooper begins motioning toward the television with terrifying
menace, practically hyperventilating. One such instance is the coverage on
9/11; in the immediate next scene, he’s marrying his wife Taya (Sienna Miller),
and a wedding guest excitedly proclaims “It’s on!” – as in, the war in Iraq.
Eastwood lazily conflates the events of September 11 with our decision to
invade Iraq, as if Chris is fighting a general, brown-skinned enemy. It gets
worse. Whenever he and his team invade a home of civilians, senselessly rifling
through their belongings, Eastwood seems blissfully unaware of the
deeply-upsetting nature of the work being done, the invasion of family life and
the overpowering of typical citizens. Throughout American Sniper, the enemy is excessively-generalized; an attempt
to parallel Chris with a sniper fighting for the other side – he was in the
Olympics – is thus insubstantial. Considering the glaring lack of nuance in the
way Eastwood depicts the “enemy” and who we’re actually fighting, these flimsy attempts
at humanization are rendered pointless.
Eastwood,
across his filmography, rarely drives a stinging point home – his success is rooted
in a broad canvassing, with observational critiques occurring imperceptibly
albeit intriguingly. And in American
Sniper, he does surround Chris with differing sentiments and perspectives.
A fellow soldier tells him in an uncharacteristically intimate moment that he “doesn’t
believe” in what they’re doing. But it’s not dealt with, and the movie doesn’t
seem to entertain his side that much. The character eventually dies, and Chris blames
it on his “giving up” – based on Chris’ swift redemption, the movie seems to
agree.
Eastwood
also has a general problem with expectation. American Sniper doesn’t approach anything new, thematically or visually.
And, beat for beat, you know exactly where things are going between
Chris and Taya. The weepy phone calls, the missed celebrations, the at-home
alienation – it would all play out a little less treacly and conventional if
Miller had anything to work with. Taya ranks among the most
under-written “wife” parts in recent memory; she’s completely on the outside, crying and wallowing in dimly-lit rooms, alone with her children. You’re
never given any sense of who she is, of what drives her, of her own
relationship to her country. If the movie weren’t so focused on their
relationship, it wouldn’t be quite so significant – but you know where it’s going,
and, compounding the problem, the emotions on-display are much too simplistic
and obvious.
The
defense of everything here would be: this is a movie about Chris, and
everything around him is intentionally peripheral and un-dealt with. Fine. But
Chris, or at least the film’s version, is about as uninvolving as heroes come.
He views his job as work. He’s tormented by his dedication to his country. He
can’t quite be right at home with what he’s seen, and what he knows. But then,
all of that goes away: American Sniper
really takes a cheap shot at an ending, opting for something weirdly-positive.
A title card tells us he’d ironically be killed by a damaged veteran at home, but the
movie’s final scene demonstrates he overcame his problems and was able to build
a life at home. Thus, American Sniper
doesn’t leave you with any significant ideas or commentary. The soldier went
through a lot, but he got over it, and things turned out okay (he
attends support group meetings with fellow vets to find common ground with
those at home, but only for a scene or two). Again, nuance is not Sniper’s intention, but the simplistic
depictions of Chris’ enemies, or his troubled fellow soldiers, or his
relationship with his wife are all suddenly proven to be unintentionally
lacking.
And
maybe it’s what happened – Eastwood may have desired to simply tell Chris’
story as it was, and allow whatever power was naturally within it to bubble.
But we know Eastwood didn’t do that. We know Chris blatantly
and elaborately lied about several acts of heroism he claimed for himself,
including sniping post-Katrina looters and hapless car-jackers. That the movie
is uninterested in these less-than-flattering character details is certainly
understandable, but it also comes off as inescapably disingenuous – Sniper, despite its hinting around the
fact, maintains Chris Kyle as a purely heroic cipher right until the
conclusion. As discussions around Selma
have reminded to death, fidelity to the facts is inessential. But for a movie
that seems to be skirting around actual complexity and inquiry, Eastwood’s decision
to ignore his character’s profound flaws and complications says a lot about the
final product.
The
Clint Eastwood of 2014 is a speedy, efficient worker, and you see the ongoing
benefits and serious drawbacks of that approach here. American Sniper is, as Eastwood’s better films tend to be, sharply-edited
and tensely-framed. It’s exemplary technical work – a sandstorm shooting
sequence near the film’s end is, in particular, a superb piece of filmmaking.
And Cooper is about as good as he can be, given the constraints of the character
– his Texas drawl never wavers, and there’s a great, imposing physicality to
his performance. He seems to be digging deeper into Chris than the script or
direction will allow him. More broadly, the story’s simultaneous simplicity and
familiarity weigh everything down. You desperately want that moment where
Cooper can make a real leap, and take Chris to a deeper place than merely
avoiding his family, or hearing gunfire while sitting quietly in his living
room. We know the material is there, and know the experience of the soldier
allows for that kind of exploration. Cooper doesn’t get the chance. Even
Eastwood’s action sequences drown themselves out – long episodes of gunfire and
explosions are often devoid of perspective, and the effect becomes numbing.
There’s so little to hold onto that even when Sniper is in its comfort zone, it isn’t what it should or could be.
Of
course, American Sniper is the movie
it wants to be – a chronicle of heroism and patriotism. That this movie is,
regardless of budget and marketing, so much more successful than The Hurt
Locker – a film of great specificity and deep thinking, one that questions
the ethics of invasion and depicts with great depth the American soldier and
his/her relationships – tells us something. We have enough distance where the
Iraq War can be given this kind of cinematic treatment and be embraced by a
large audience. Here’s the main problem: American
Sniper is not a war movie. It’s a superhero movie, a forthright celebration
of a legendary sniper who killed for good. But soldiers are not superheroes –
they are as reluctant as they are sacrificial, as flawed as they are heroic. They
are human. American Sniper wants to tell
an honest story of American valor, but: the “other” is generally and inhumanely
characterized, the model soldier is depicted as completely infallible, the interior
life of all involved is deemed irrelevant, correctable if tormented. And sadly, these
elements, tantalizing as they may make an on-screen narrative, just aren’t true.
Grade: C-