war movie and a devastating antiwar movie.

Rating: 9/10 (16 January 2015)

A subdued celebration of a warrior's skill and a sorrowful lament over his alienation and misery. The movie, set during the Iraq War, has the troubled ambivalence about violence that has shown up repeatedly in Eastwood's work since the famous scene, midway through "Unforgiven," in which the act of killing anguishes the killer. Eastwood, working with the screenwriter Jason Hall and with Bradley Cooper, who stars in the film, has adapted the 2012 best-selling autobiography by the Navy SEAL sharpshooter Chris Kyle (which was written with Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice). "American Sniper" is devoted to Kyle's life as a son, a husband, a father, and, most of all, a decorated military man—one of the most lethal snipers in U.S. military history. Kyle, who made a hundred and sixty confirmed kills (and more than two hundred probable kills), is always sure that he's defending American troops—and his country—against "savages." Perched on a rooftop in Ramadi or in Sadr City, he's methodical and imperturbable, and he rarely misses, even at great distance. He shoots insurgents, members of Al Qaeda in Iraq, and, when he thinks it necessary, a woman and a child. He's haunted by the thought of the Americans he hasn't been able to save. Cooper is all beefed up— by beer as much as by iron, from the looks of it (it's intentionally not a movie-star body)—and he gives a performance that's vastly different from any that he's given in the past. With fellow-SEALs in the field, he's convivial, profane, and funny; at home with his loving wife (Sienna Miller, who's excellent), he's increasingly withdrawn and dead-eyed, enraptured only by the cinema of war playing in his mind. The movie reality created by Eastwood is powerful and intense, and "American Sniper" is arguably his best picture since "Unforgiven."