Solid, moving Iraq War stuff, a bit by the book but well done

Rating: 7/10 (21 March 2015)

American Sniper (2014)
1) For those familiar with the military culture in the U.S. this will offer some familiar insights into how families deal with their servicemen overseas.
2) For those who know the war in Iraq either directly or through the movies, this will add to a series of rather good movies (though only movies, to be sure) about that tense conflict. It doesn't have the depth of "The Hurt Locker" and others, but it's well done, and has real impact.
3) For the idea of a sniper, the adulated and reviled rifleman who picks people off on the edges of battle, this movie goes far, and this is probably the unique contribution of the film.
4) As a movie, as a construction of scenes and flow of narrative ideas, it's good, very good, but nothing beyond the normally well made movies that Clint Eastwood (the director) and many others with professional backing manage to pull off. It's not easy, but it's stuck a bit in its methods, the movie-making protocols.
I number these because everyone has strong opinions about the content of this movie (and to an extent the director with his well known conservative politics). I don't know what to make of it in a larger context because I'm not an Eastwood fan outside of his movies, and I'm not in favor of what happened in Iraq. Politically. However, once you send our young men and women into a war zone, you have to understand the war for what it is, not for what it might have been if it wasn't. Obviously.
The revelation of this movie is that it makes clear what it is to be in this troubled situation EVEN IF you were all for it. The leading character, the sniper, played with astonishing realism by Bradley Cooper, has to be all kinds of things to satisfy himself. This is a movie about a man who has something to prove, but also a duty to perform. His personal life, his marriage, his role as a father, is all compromised by this duty to do something he thinks he has to. And he does extremely well.
Whatever you think of the politics (or whatever you call them) that go with the release of the movie, it's still a really conventional story, well told. There are no creative leaps, no unexpected insights, nothing to make it go outside that old box people talk about. So enjoy it for what is is, thoroughly. A pleasant experience.