Inside view of a sniper's life.

Rating: 8/10 (29 January 2015)

This film has been fiercely criticized for glorifying war and violence, for giving a one-sided view of the Iraqi war in favor of America and for ignoring the issue at large. Well, Clint Eastwood's ambition was not to make any moral or political assessment but simply to tell the story of this sniper's life. The topic is extremely controversial, since a sniper's business is generally judged to be the least honorable and most cowardly way of making war - you kill people by hiding from them. Nevertheless, Clint Eastwood succeeds in defending his sniper. For the first time you are convinced that he has to do what he is doing, he simply has no choice, it has to be done, and there are two crucial instances when he is faced with the very difficult issue of having to fire at children. The first one is in the beginning of the film, there is the child's mother also, and he kills them both - there is nothing else to do. In the second issue he actually prays that the boy will not pick up the rocket that has been left by the soldier he just shot down. The child picks up the rocket and starts moving as if to use it, the sniper hesitates, this is perhaps the most poignant moment in the whole film - and I will not reveal what happens. In the end he returns to ordinary civil life, and the story reaches a sudden and quite unexpected end, which must reconcile anyone to this whole sordid business. It's true, he killed 160 people in the most cowardly possible way, but you have to excuse him. Someone had to do it, and he only did what he had to do. End of story. Clint Eastwood refrains from any further comment, and so should we.