Decent But Missing The Crispness

Rating: 7/10 (15 January 2019)

18 January 2015. This movie is about Chris Kyle, a real Navy SEAL, who made several tours in the Iraq War and considered the most lethal sniper in U.S. military history. What this movie attempts to accomplish apparently is both an action movie and a biographical movie about Chris's wartime experiences and his transformation as a human being as a result on his relationships. While the movie does a decent job with both, it somehow misses the mark.
Both Enemy At The Gates (2001) and Spy Game (2001) offer more richness and depth of the sniper experience. In Spy Game, Brad Pitt is trained in the nuances of espionage while in American Sniper, Bradley Cooper, is seen being trained in intense but more basic training. But one would expect to see more specialized training which of SEALs are well known and which supposedly is put into some use later in the movie. There are some questionable decisions or lack of both in strategy and on the ground on the part of the United States military that are explained or complained about in the movie. While there is some rationale for the one-sided portrayal of Americans as the good guys and Iraqi insurgents as the bad guys, Enemy At The Gates seemed more intimate because both Jude Law as a Russian sniper and Ed Harris as a German sniper are presented as human beings with a sort of dignity and code of ethics, who respected each other (of course, in reality it's likely impossible to know how Chris and his arch-enemy felt about each other). Nevertheless, Chris's brother's character seems underdeveloped and possibly of some important value to the story of Chris Kyle which was apparently not incorporated into the movie.
As for the cinematography, there is something lacking in the crispness and intimacy of the photography that seems to distance the audience from the action. Such sharp resolution, especially with a biography, is made more potent in such movies as Saving Private Ryan (1998), Black Hawk Down (2001), Hurt Locker (2008), Jar Head (2005), We Were Soldiers (2002), and even Anglina Jolie's Unbroken (2014). Perhaps, an excellent portrayal of war might to found in the docudrama television mini-series about World War I, The Great War Diary (2014) As for character development, there seems to be something missing here too. Perhaps this is unavoidable, as a military man who experienced several tours of war and Chris's upbringing may have shut off his inner self from the rest of the world, but nevertheless, the intensity found in such characters as Angelina Jolie's performance in Changeling (2008) or Christian Slater's performance in He Was A Quiet Man (2007) is missing.
It is understandable why this movie is being nominated for awards, especially due to its relevant subject matter, the impact of war time experience on soldiers, yet even at the end, there seems to be a lack of full awareness and understanding on the part of the audience as to Chris's experience towards life and death.