It's all about shooting

Rating: 4/10 (27 February 2015)

Basically, Texan cowboy decides to join the navy after watching two American embassies blown up in terrorist attacks. As a child he had learned from his father that humanity consisted of sheeps, wolves and sheepdogs (deep philosophy here, you might think you were about to watch a piece of artsy cinema!) and that he was expected to become one of the latter.
After hard training he becomes a SEAL. Then he meets cute-faced girl with a character at a bar (she states she despises marines, but attends regularly a bar always crowded with SEALS, marines and the like...). They marry, and after the S-11 attacks he is sent to Iraq as a sniper.
We then see him directly in action, American troops patrol the streets of a devastated city searching for... well, we never really get to know what they are looking for... which is not surprising since we were in this same situation for 10 years... (well, if you watch "Green Zone", an interesting and pretty good film, you might get a clue about it)
He proves to be an effective sharpshooter, and becomes appreciated by his comrades as they feel safer when he is around, but eventually he gets bored of being the whole day lying on his stomach and aiming with his gun, and decides to join the guys who patrol the streets and break into more or less every house in the neighborhood, it's good to go out and stretch one's legs from time to time.
Eventually, a counterpart turns up in the enemy lines, kinda modern Saladin or Baybars, cool-looking Middle Eastern guy with a damn good shot and leadership abilities!. Then we expect the film might become a sort of re-edition of Jude Law vs. Ed Harris duel "Enemy at the gates"-style... far from it... Nothing particularly interesting happens for a long stretch.
Our SEAL guy goes back home and then to Iraq again several times, meanwhile his child is born and cute-faced wife gets angrier and angrier at him since she considers he is neglecting his family and becoming obsessed with war (C'mon! take it easy, don't women who attend military men-crowded bars always dream of becoming the spouse of a hero??). When our hero finally shoots down his turban wearing enemy he decides to go home definitively.
Once on homeland he passes through the usual period of difficulty to adapt to boring please-dear-take-out-the-dog-now-dinner-will-be-ready-soon lifestyle... only that we have seen this before lots of times and, nearly without exception, much better depicted (The Deer Hunter or Born on the Fourth of July look so far away in time now...)
In order to overcome this situation he joins a group of ex- combatants, many of them crippled, to try to help them. The therapy consists of meetings to talk and share experiences, and an additional activity. What activity?... maybe a reader's club where they comment on books? No; maybe occupational therapy workshops on some kind of craft-work, music? Nope; maybe excursions and trips to the countryside for fishing, bird watching and so on? No either. What they do as a therapy consists of... SHOOTING!!!! (yeah, I'm serious!, watch the film if you don't believe me). I wonder what life must be like when you look at it permanently through the telescopic sight of a weapon...
At the end, one of these shooters shoot the shooter, and he dies. The film did not receive the Oscar to Best Film (much to Donald Trump dismay) but it won the one to Sound Editing... well, the shots echo sounded great! and since more or less everything was about shooting... It seems for some people there is little more to life than... shooting!!!