The best war movies are always harrowing. American Sniper is this and more- an exploration of humanity, masculinity, and potentially, our downfall

Rating: 6/10 (20 January 2015)

There's a certain bleakness about war for me. That we, as people, are driven to kill each other on the battlefield, again and again. And again. Being born into a relatively blessed time, decades since any major conflict that would have involved me had I been alive, it's still surreal to imagine that to wage war is inexorably human. That for the longest time, men have been driven to kill other men, for kin or country.
In talking about sheep, wolves and sheepdogs, The American Sniper paints a picture of why some men choose to engage in war. To fight the good fight. To stick up for those who can't stick up for themselves. And in someway i felt like it insinuated- to lose that belief, that drive to 'fight the good fight' is to let yourself die in the heat of battle. But how could you not second guess what you were doing, if it involved killing children, destroying homes, invading another person's land, their land for millennia? I'm always struck by the irony that, to be a war hero means to be incredibly good at killing other people, efficiently, effectively.
Bradley Cooper paints an enthralling portrait of the archetypical American hero- the sheep dog, tough guy, with his southern gentleman-ly manners and undeniably human morality. Perhaps what i don't think it does is capture the humanity of the Iraqis. Save one example, we don't come across any Iraqi civilian who's not out to get Americans. Perhaps showing the human side of Iraqi life wasn't an aim of the film. But i do think it treaded the border between aggrandising the heroism of war and shuddering at it's wretchedness very finely.
Overall a great film to start 2015, and likely realistic- but very much a patriotic representation of an American war hero- that perhaps misses detail on the other side of life in war.