Confused movie full of 2-dimentional cardboard characters

Rating: 3/10 (3 April 2015)

I would like to make this review about the movie in question, while avoiding as much political rhetoric as possible. This site is not a political publication, so we all should concentrate on talking about movies here. I cannot believe how primitive and illogical this movie turned out. I expected something deeper and more believable from Clint Eastwood (don't know why, but I did). What is there to like in this movie? Well, maybe some good camera-work, some FX, such as the sand storm scene. Those turned out fine. What's so illogical about this film? Many things are.
For instance: 1) The main character who considers himself such a dedicated, G-d fearing Christian doesn't think twice about stealing from a church (although it is just an old Bible, but theft is theft, especially from a place of prayer; Kyle never reads this Bible, though. Some Christian.). 2) Then, this same dedicated "christian" eagerly runs on multiple killing sprees all over the world shooting not just adult male combatants, but also women and children -- all based on what he saw once on CNN. Isn't it just lovely? The CNN folks don't blink twice before telling everyone about Australia building a wall on the border with SLOVENIA. A wall. On the border.
It order to feel good about these killings, the main character just calls the people of Iraq "savages". According to this movie, it must be cool to be killing "savages", if CNN tells you so. But then again, since "...In real life Chris Kyle and his fellow SEALs were such big fans of GI Joe that they named their vehicles after 2 of the characters...", there is no reason to expect any extreme intelligence there. 3) Being an experienced sniper, the main character occupies same poorly protected and not tremendously well hidden spots for hours, making multiple kills without ever worrying about being detected and taken down with an RPG or a mortar, although later on one single shot made by Kyle causes his team to be immediately noticed and what looks like hundreds of enemy combatants attack the team. Kyle's spotters don't ever do any spotting. They just sit down somewhere making jokes or snoozing. I guess that Clint Eastwood is not really familiar with some basic principles of sniping and doesn't really know that a long-zoom rifle scope usually produces a very narrow field of view that makes it hard to see "the big picture" around you. So this Kyle character goes on identifying targets, correcting for wind and temperature, taking targets down all on his own while endlessly chatting on the radio and on his phone. What a marvelous fairy-tale! 4) He constantly loses expensive equipment, such as a sat phone, a customized sniper rifle, and he never gets reprimanded for it. Then eventually his comrades practically lose him in a sand storm. 5) Counter-sniping in this movie never involves any use of artillery or air assets. All the snipers just run from/after one another while dodging bullets. Counter-sniping done western-style.
While true patriotism is admirable and there must be more movies made depicting it, this film is full of what is called "patriotic garbage" in its purest form, which is very unfortunate, because it cheapens image of a real patriot. Most of the "civilian" scenes are nothing but clichés and they merely water down the action. So, generally speaking, this could've been a great dramatic and action movie, but it leaves a comic-book impression with compete and utter disregard for any aspects of morality. Certain scenes are obvious plagiarisms "borrowed" from Top Gun and Black Hawk Down. When a director lacks his own original ideas, it is a HUGE 'minus'. This movie seems to be highly rated and well accepted by other CNN/Fox viewers. Not a 'plus'.