American Sniper: Misses the Mark

Rating: 4/10 (20 January 2015)

Like many, I had very high expectations for this film. Regardless of the high praise it was getting from critics, American Sniper looked at first glance like it would be one of the best films of the year. It had all the makings of a truly great war flick, great true story, talented leading role and a more than capable director at the helm in Clint Eastwood. With all this in mind, I went into the theater with rather high expectations and I left only to have all of them shattered. American Sniper falls flat on almost every account. I never really felt any emotional connection to Kyle. All the situations in which Eastwood creates in order for the audience to feel for Kyle; his brief and terrible childhood sequence, his impromptu phone calls to his wife in the middle of battles, his struggle with PTSD after returning from duty, all felt like a desperate and poor act by the director to get me to relate or feel for Kyle. I'm not doubting that some of these events occurred, I'm sure some of them did - but they way they were portrayed in the film were such Hollywoodized versions of real life events that I really struggled finding any shred of believe-ability in them. The movie does not even succeed in its action aspect, having battle sequences that are extremely poorly shot and generic (the few that there are). Cooper, a lone bright spot in the the film, does a solid job with what little content he has but not even he is enough to save this train wreck of a movie from being what it really is; a movie with no heart, devoid of all true emotion.