"Gung ho" American propaganda? Uh, this movie was barely mobile actually. Try wiping the drool off your chin and breathing before you type.

Rating: Null/10 (14 April 2019)

This movie got an Oscar nomination but only because it was a movie about a supposed "big" or serious subject - America's wars - and because they increased the number of films which receive best picture nominations....
It is by no means a "pro-USA propaganda movie" and it's quite disturbing to see the number of reviews which say that.
Like with any movie titled "American (something)" I was skeptical that this could live up to the idea of being as grand and spectacular as America itself, or that it would give us some kind of "insight" into the American psyche, and what makes an American sniper so different from say, um, I dunno... a French one... yada yada... etc.
And unfortunately I was right, "American Sniper" hugely fails most of all to give us a spectacular visual display of why he was such a brilliant marksman or soldier. We're largely supposed to just believe he was because of the way his buddies and fellow soldiers call him "legend". Only near the end of the film does it even attempt any visual effects (some simple slow-mo), when he's taking out his main enemy. It's not surprising that this movie was so poorly and half-heartedly made, the director Clint Eastwood was already in his early 80s by the time this came out.
At the same time. his romance with his wife was not delivered really memorably in my opinion, so it failed to tug on the heart strings when she was talking to him on the phone from 1000s of miles away. None of the other soldiers make any impact as memorable characters, unlike in classic war movies such as Full Metal Jacket. Everything here is bland, mediocre and by the numbers.
There is little-to-no memorable dialogue and at one time the movie just kinda forgets which decade it's supposed to be set in - the part where Kyle says something to his wife about "people spending time on their phones". People didn't complain about people "spending so much time on their phones" back in the 2000s when this guy was in Iraq. That's a 2010s complaint, which makes the movie one which seems to zone in and out consciousness much like you would if you were in the actual desert.
This is a lazily scripted movie because the writers knows that you already know the story. We all know about PTSD (which was never actually covered), we've heard about it hundreds of times, and we all heard about the sniper being killed by his own crazy "buddy".
But seriously - how could this film be "US propaganda" when the movie both opens AND ends, concentrating on the idea of Cooper's character pointing his rifle at children? The movie is clearly either conceding ground to the idea of, (or living in the world where) the US was a big nasty human-rights-hating bully which goes around the world killing innocent foreign kids just because eeevil Bush and Cheney felt like it.
Despite being over five years old and the massive pandering that I pointed out above - lame, one-sentence reviews continue to pour in for this movie, from god knows what physical and mental locations, calling it "FASCIST UMurriCunnn Porpppraguuurnduuuuuuuuuuurgh" and the like, which is a lot more eye-opening than this weak movie was. Oh and Clint Eastwood continues to pump out yawnfests that take 100+ minutes to play out the opening paragraphs of famous/historical peoples' Wikipedia articles. That's probably one of the reasons why Hollywood now makes less money than the videogame industry, despite folks having to pay four or five times for a new game what they would have to pay for a movie ticket.