At the grand old age of
84, Clint Eastwood has made another outing in the director's chair,
this time at the helm of American Sniper,
a troubling and dark thriller. Based upon the autobiography of US
Navy SEAL Chris Kyle (who became famous – or infamous – for
racking up over 160 confirmed kills during his time as a sniper in
Iraq), the film has certainly ignited debates over the justifications
of the Iraq war and attitudes towards killing and violence. American
Sniper has done fantastically at
the US box office (taking over $90m to date) and is certainly a
tense, affecting and taut piece of cinema. But it is Clint Eastwood's
evading of a moral commentary and an apparent poker face when it
comes to the film's contribution to the debates on modern warfare
which trap its main character in a cell of ambiguity: one which the
audience cannot hope to penetrate.
The
film I expected to see and the film that I actually saw were wildly
different. American Sniper would,
I thought, explore the strange dichotomy experienced by military
snipers: the intimacy with targets afforded to them by their sights
and their simultaneous geographical isolation from them. The
psychological effects of such a dramatic juxtaposition and the
intense, veracious violence with which snipers engage the enemy would
make for an impressive screenplay. American Sniper,
however, chooses to neglect such questions, choosing instead to focus
on Chris Kyle's (Bradley Cooper) Iraq experiences as a backdrop for
his becoming known as 'the Legend', both in the military and back
home in Texas, where he achieved celebrity status.
Some
have called this character focus (we only see the Iraq war through
Kyle's eyes, or should that be sight) a fundamental flaw in the film,
accusing Eastwood of making a boring and intellectually-anaemic film.
I disagree, and there is nothing wrong with choosing to construct a
whole film about Iraq around one character – this is, after all, an
adaptation of an autobiography. We first encounter Chris Kyle on the
rooftops of Fallujah as he makes the first (of many)
intensely-difficult decisions: whether or not to shoot a young boy
who is approaching American forces with a grenade. Kyle's decision
catapults the audience into a flashback of Kyle's upbringing with his
hunter father and his time as a rancher, before joining the SEALS
after 9/11.
Eastwood's
film in an incredibly macho one: from Kyle's early life in the heart
of Texas (his fridge is adorned with a magnet inscribed with the
apposite words “Don't mess with Texas") to his time in military
training where men would throw darts into each other's backs in the
pub, Eastwood retains a focus on male dominance in the theatre of
war. The film's only female character of significance is Kyle's wife,
Taya (played by Sienna Miller) who remains at home with all the
accompanying worry, grief and frustration experienced by any partner
of a serving soldier. It is through Miller's performance (and it
really is a very good one) that the audience are exposed to the ideas
that I thought the film would be about: guilt, relationships with
family and PTSD. Kyle is troubled, most definitely, by his killing of
Iraqis, but this is only captured fleetingly in the film. The
real-life events of 2013 give the film a rather clunky ending and the
extent to which this biopic glamorises its controversial subject is a
little difficult for the audience to resolve. Whether Chris Kyle is a
hero or a villain is very much open to interpretation, as is
America's role in the invasion of Iraq and Eastwood has little to say
on either front.
Bradley
Cooper's performance carries the film and his vacant stare and
authentic look (he put on 40 pounds for the role) are compelling to
watch. I'm genuinely pleased to see actors such as Cooper and
Channing Tatum take on more serious and powerful roles (Cooper's
performance in this is enough to make me forgive him for The
Hangover – just). His screen
presence as an elite soldier is convincing and Eastwood's confident,
precise and grounded movement of the camera, especially in the
intense and thrilling final battle sequence, give the film a weight
which would have otherwise been lost.
American Sniper's
apolitical nature and its, at times, American flag waving, has
stirred up great debate and anger amongst many. The film would have
been stronger had it had something more definite to say, but Cooper's
performance and Eastwood's assured direction of the scenes in Iraq,
make it worth watching. It will unsettle some people and, perhaps,
enrage others. But it is a film which will, if nothing else, spark a
debate and stay with you for a while after the credits have rolled.
Clapperboard Rating: * * *
