American Sniper

Rated R / 2 hr 13 min / Action - Biography - Drama

What is it about?

This movie follows the life of Chris Kyle. He starts out as a cowboy who is riding horses in competitions on weekends. After a weekend of competing, he comes home to find his girlfriend cheating on him. He kicks the girlfriend and the guy out. Something important comes out of this encounter. He realizes that he is destined for a higher purpose. He signs up for the NAVY and during Seal training they find that he has skill with a sniper rifle. On his wedding day he finds out that he is being deployed to Iraq. He goes on to become the most lethal sniper in American history through three more tours of duty. His family wants him to come home, but he brings the war home with him.

You will like it if...

You like war films that deal with the tortured souls who fight in it. First and foremost Bradley Cooper gives the best performance of his life. You can tell that he is very passionate about the character he plays. Clint Eastwood has a tendency to make long drawn out movies that have long lulls in the action. American Sniper is the exception. It is long and drawn out, but I never felt like the action dropped off like in his other films. The movie isn't perfect. It displays the horrors of the war in Iraq effectively, but the story flops all over the place like a fish out of water with no direction. I think that is mostly the result of trying to compress several years of Chris Kyle's life into a movie. Clint Eastwood did the best he could with the source material and crafted the best war movie I've seen in several years. It felt like everyone involved brought their A game to try to do justice to the story of Chris Kyle's life.

One last thing I want to mention. I have seen a lot of people spouting hate towards Islam, muslims, etc.. after seeing this movie. This is a story about protecting each other, not hating people for their religion or where they grew up. If you're not mature enough to avoid giving into that stigma then you shouldn't watch this movie because you're missing the point. Chris didn't want to pull that trigger to take a life. He did it because if he hadn't then someone else would have died.