A huge let down

Rating: 4/10 (29 January 2015)

I can put aside that they chose to allude to 9/11 being the cause of the the Iraq War--which is patently false, Iraq had nothing to do with the Twin Towers attack, yet there we see the towers going down and two scenes later the boys are called up to go fight.
I can also put aside the fact that the real Chris Kyle was been proved to liar in many of the stories in his book, even losing a lawsuit brought by Jesse Ventura, turns out Kyle totally made his story about punching him out up.
But what I can't put aside, is even if you look at this as a fictional movie, that it's so poorly done. I should point out I like war movies, I've seen most of them from the old classics to the modern era, and American Sniper was completely underwhelming. The war and fight scenes weren't as intense as Hurt Locker, Lone Survivor or Black Hawk Down, the tension with tracking down the other sniper wasn't built up at all (like say with Zero Dark Thirty), and the character development and story depth was nothing close to Saving Private Ryan, Apocalypse Now, Platoon and Full Metal Jacket. I love a good shoot 'em up war movie and I love a movie that looks into the psychological effects of war on soldiers, but American Sniper just seemed weak in it's attempts at both. Want a realistic depiction of modern warfare? Watch the Generation Kill series, it's brilliant. Or watch any of the other movies I've mentioned, they are all better than American Sniper. It baffles me the ratings and success such a sub-par war movie is getting. That said, Bradly Cooper did the best he could with the script and direction, but this could have been such a better movie. And the ending was a total cop out.