American Sniper

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: * * *