Disgraceful, dishonest and offensive - one-dimensional twaddle

Rating: 4/10 (31 January 2015)

Clint Eastwood's latest, American Sniper, presents this reviewer with a real quandary: if you buy into Eastwood's central premise that the SEALS, marines and other U.S. grunts who rampaged around Iraq in the second Coalition invasion imagining they were 'liberating' its people were justified in their mission and actions, and if you subscribe to the gungho simplistic notion of the 'good guys' and the 'bad guys', American Sniper does the business, though in a pretty pedestrian, run-of-the-mill manner (Eastwood won't win any awards for imaginative direction).
If you don't buy into Eastwood's central premise - and I certainly don't - American Sniper is a disgraceful, offensive piece of garbage. I don't doubt that it might have tens of thousands of red-blooded young Yankees cheering on their man to the rafters and will have many a Vietnam and Iraq War vet wiping away a private tear in memory of fallen friends and comrades, and I can understand their reaction. (According to IMDb figures, American Sniper has already taken more then $217 million at the box office.) But that doesn't in any way redeem the film itself.
Let me make it very clear that I believe it is the politicians, notably George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Tony Blair and their acolytes, who must be blamed for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, most of them civilian, which have resulted from the second Iraq War, not the men they sent there to do their dirty work, many of whom lost their lives and a great many more of whom lost limbs.
They, as always throughout history, paid and are still paying the price of what often seems like one man's vanity - exactly why George Bush got it into his head that Iraq must be invaded and persuaded Britain's Tony Blair to support his plans was, is and will remain forever a mystery: no 'weapons of mass destruction were found' and Iraq's then dictator Saddam Hussein was not only not harbouring Al Qaeda, he was at daggers drawn with them.
I didn't actually cotton on that Eastwood was this film's director until the credits rolled - the fact had simply eluded me until then. But had I done so, and going on past Eastwood efforts, I would have had second thoughts about sitting down to watch another of his efforts. Eastwood's alleged masterpiece Unforgiven is, in my view, anything but and merely a two-dimensional cowboy film brought up to day in which the transformation of a now peaceful, retired and more or less arthritic gunslinger and how he regains his rusty skills in about two and a half minutes is ludicrous.
Even more ludicrous is the transformation in Gran Turino of a lifelong racist who hates Asians because of his wartime experiences virtually overnight into a caring, liberal do-gooder who'll give his life for one of them. In musical terms Eastwood is something of a two-chord merchant and neither chord is interesting.
American Sniper is from the same stable and has even greater faults: what, exactly, is 'the story'? All we get is merely a series of gun battles, most of which are confusing in the extreme. The characterisation of Chris Kyle and his patient, though often despairing, wife are so rudimentary as to be non-existent. Why, exactly, did Kyle repeatedly volunteer for tours of duty and in doing so neglect his wife and two young children? Suggesting it was 'patriotism' might work in a primary school textbook, but otherwise will not wash - there is something more profound at work, but Eastwood's American Sniper suggests nothing.
And why were Iraqis defending their country from what they saw as invading aggressors so vilified? They were only doing what each of those patriotic US servicemen would also do if Texas or New England, or Utah - or anywhere in the US - were invaded: they would defend their country, homes and family to the last man.
Yet when Iraqis do it they are 'bad' and 'savages'. Give me a break! Doesn't it occur to Eastwood and his assorted cheerleaders that every country in the world believes itself to be 'the best'? I don't for a second deny anyone - not least the Americans - the patriotic pride they feel (thought it does stick in my craw that the rest of us are by default expected to share that pride and equally vilified if we don't), but they must allow folk from other nations to feel the same pride. Those are two more reasons why Eastwood's American Sniper is disgraceful, offensive garbage and dishonest to boot.
Whether or not you rate the film will most certainly depend on what your take is on the second Iraq War, and having read what I have to say you might disagree entirely with the points I make. But be warned: if you don't disagree with me, then give this film a miss. You will get nothing from it but anger and supreme irritation.
(I have given this a 4/10 and not a lesser mark merely because technically American Sniper stands up. For content it would get 0/10.)