Mumble mumble MURIKUH HELL YEAH mumble mumble

Rating: 6/10 (9 January 2015)

(Pulls up an empty chair, speaks to an imaginary figure there) Dear Mr Eastwood, We don't know each other, we have never met and it's highly unlikely we ever will. I'm writing to say, I like your movies. In fact, a few of them are among the finest movies ever made. 'Unforgiven', 'Play Misty for me', 'Magnum Force' to name but the first few that come to mind - oh, the memories, oh the skill. Thank you for them all sir.
I just saw your latest 'American Sniper'. Good choice in Bradley Cooper. He does a great job even if he seems to have based his portrayal of Chris Kyle on the youtube clown 'Mumbles' because it's almost impossible to understand what Cooper flub-bubs his way through for 90% of the film. However, that may also be attributable to what I think even you know Mr Eastwood was a weak and much too MUCH gung-ho script. Hats off though to Tom Stern for some really great cinematography.
Sienna Miller - no. Don't, OK? Don't. Not your smartest choice.
On to the film. There's an old John Wayne movie, 'The Green Berets' - you are sure to have seen it Mr Eastwood. It's one of the earliest attempts to portray what life was like for the average soldier in Vietnam. This was made long before the true darkness of Vietnam was revealed to us all via the first hand accounts of those who were there, as well as through films such as 'Platoon', 'Apocalypse Now' and 'Full Metal Jacket' to name but a few. In Green Berets, the Viet Cong are portrayed as fanatical, do-or-die, indoctrinated insurgents who almost cheerfully run headlong into the line of fire of American bullets, and where every one of those bullets seems to take down 15 VC at a time while their own bullets seem to whistle past the American forces, never striking GI Joe even once. Your film 'American Sniper' showed us the same thing. Turn any corner in Iraq, and it seems there's someone openly carrying a weapon and who is intent on making sure everyone knows it too. That good men do bad things in times of war is a given. The reasons why people who have seen their homeland illegally invaded and their loved ones dead in pools of blood because of that invasion should choose to do bad things by defending themselves was never addressed even once. It's almost like this film chose to ignore what we have all seen, read and learned about war. For you Mr Eastwood, there is no cultural cross fertilization, no understanding, no reflection upon such grave matters. You need to think hard about why that did not happen in your movie Mr Eastwood. You really do.
What I found more offensive, however, was the awful dichromatic version of historical events this film chooses to portray. White skin equals 'Good, right, free, logical'. Brown skin equals 'despicable, duplicitous, savage, barbaric'. Surely to all that is known we know enough that such a division is not only wholly erroneous in the extreme but does great harm in a world already divided along social, political and economic lines - never mind racial and/or religious ones. Again, think hard about that Mr Eastwood. You have let us all down by choosing to be so racially divisive in such a clownish way but, most of all, you let yourself down. At your age, and after all you have seen people achieve in trying to bridge the racial divide in your own country, surely such a poor representation of human diversity as you display in your film serves only to take us all backwards and not forwards toward comprehension and inclusion.
All nations need a Chris Kyle and his like. In times of peace, they end up in jail, locked up for life because of their psychopathic behavior and inability to deal with reality (Let's not forget, Kyle was proved in court, not just once but several times, to be a liar). However, in times of war, men like Kyle get sent out to kill under a banner of 'right and just', get medals put on their chest after they kill and acquire the sobriquet of 'Legend'. Mr Eastwood, your film would have been much better had you focused on the former rather than the latter of these two scenarios.
I gave this film a rating of 6 out of 10. That's because of Bradley Cooper's performance. He did the best he could do, in spite of being saddled with a bad script. Mr Eastwood, I give you a 2 out of 10 and a 'must try harder'. Please don't choose to go down this same road again.