Easy to admire on a technical level, but deeply troubling as a historical account

Rating: 4/10 (31 May 2020)

This film has good cinematography, sound, and a committed performance by Cooper, and other characters. What's wrong is the screenplay. Very, very wrong.
I read Chris Kyle's book, and he was far from a pleasant character, however good he might have been with a rifle. A quasi-sainthood with which this film heaps on Kyle (the closing credits are disturbing to see, in this regard) with PTSD unsurprisingly put as the sole demon that interferes with that sainthood. This does huge disservice to how borderline psychopathic and jingoistic the real Kyle was to the people of the Middle East. Which you can read all about in his own text. You get none of that explored in any depth here. Because that would be 'anti-American' of course.
Eastwood also ought to know better as a director than to just present this Iraqi conflict as a pro American flag waving, us versus them, 'makes up for 9/11' quest. But that's what it is. The only moral questions that we're presented with are Kyle's fears about shooting children, what his work does in taking him away from his family in America, or how he balances his home life on return with helping out other vets. Little else. Nothing on the devastating bloodshed inflicted on the Middle East by the West, at least partly in the names of oil and opium.
You might feel moved by watching this, but you realise soon after that you've been had, if you're politically informed in any way. I don't recommend this film, and I'm glad I never paid money to see it at the cinema, or buying on video at least.