The Iraq War was disturbing; it is so in American Sniper, directed by Clint Eastwood and scripted by Jason Hall. It was also a war where jihadist savages needed, for more reasons than one, to be killed, and the American sniper of the movie, Navy SEAL Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper), snuffs out well over a hundred of them. Though a mere two-dimensional character, Kyle at any rate can be as stressed as he is strong, as finally shaken as he is patriotic. Sniper is an interesting war movie, stark and stirring and bloody and anti-jihadist. One wishes there was someone like Kyle to take out the members of ISIS.
For the most part the screenplay is expertly written, and plenty of good work issues from Eastwood. I’d like to see the film again before I comment on the acting.
It is now known that over 3,000 chemical weapons were found by coalition soldiers in Iraq (Karl Rove chose to communicate nothing about them). Men like Kyle did not fight in this disturbing war in vain.
English: Clint Eastwood at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
