Sadly myopic and anachronistic

Rating: 2/10 (18 January 2015)

So I saw American Sniper yesterday, I must say I wanted to like this film. I wanted to like it because while Clint Eastwood has been a part-time, chair-addressing GOP buffoon, at other times he has been a masterful director. The film sets up its polemic pretty quickly, and extremely bluntly. You can either be a sheep (of course a blind follower, and easy victim, and likely 90% of the world's people), a wolf, (pure evil, Al Quaeda), or a sheepdog (irrationally driven to kill the wolf and protect others with no questions asked, America, Navy seals, our hero). Over the course of the next two hours we watch how adherence to the need to kill the wolf slowly affects our titular hero Chris Kyle (played by Bradley Cooper). My jury is still out on Cooper, and this film doesn't help. I think he approached some really good work in American Hustle, acting as a bad acting undercover agent. But it's hard to take some actors seriously when they have a large catalogue of teen comedies under their belt. Maybe he just hasn't had a chance to show whatever chops he might have by being able to show at least some internal turmoil in a film. Not that there shouldn't be a chance here, as the film recounts a sniper who over the course of four tours gains the rather ignominious reputation as the killing-est sniper ever. And as we watch him progress from playground attacks to from killing animals to picking off citizens, Eastwood and the writers keep hitting us on the head with the sheepdog metaphor. And this is the blunt part. However, such on-going carnage is certain to affect a guy – even our sheepdog, and he becomes withdrawn, and displays some vague PTSD symptoms. Things get worse when he almost kills the family dog. So we get it killing might be bad for you. And this part tries to be less blunt, but instead is a bit vague. However, herein lies the whole problem with the film. Eastwood, and the script (based on Kyle's own recollections) never allow this examination to stray beyond the central metaphor. And the question that needs to be, but is never asked screams throughout the entire film – that is – if you invade a country looking for made-up WMDs after somebody else bombed your big city, are you really a sheepdog, or merely a vengeance hound? And yet while Kyle slowly is affected by his massive bloodletting, he never questions the central metaphor, his place, and by extension, America's right to be the "sheepdog". So when children try to free their country with whatever means they have, he still murders them, absolutely guilt free. He murders and murders and murders and murders – never question the central existential premise of why am I here? In other words, he's an excellent robot for the kind of thinking the military tries to instill. And the film subtly, through omission, and through its devotion to Kyle, tries to underscore this same sensibility. And it is this that is most offensive about the film, even after 12 years and hopefully some clearer-eyed reflection, it still proudly beats its chest with the right of America to pretend to be a sheepdog (and anyone that questions that will meet the fangs of that hound). But should we be surprised? You can look up film titles with the name America or American in them. Over 200 exist. No other country even come close – no such hubris could possibly manifest itself, even in other patriotism-giddy places. One cannot imagine a film titled "Scottish Sniper", "Nepali Grenadier", "Frenchman Fusilier" or "Lithuanian Artillery", unless they were a comedy. The attachment of the national adjective, for the rest of the world makes us groan at such presumptive self-importance. But in its home market that adjective still breeds reverence. The notion of American exceptionalism - the unsubstantiated idea that America is 'different' and thus 'anointed' somehow for 'special' responsibilities and 'rights' to the rest of the world's business - is still consistently driving that culture, regardless of the growing greater body of evidence that it's based on lies, myth, and hokum. Kyle spews a short diatribe about it himself very early in the film, in a recruitment office. His boast is hilarious on its face, but ultra-creepy given the conviction he puts behind it. But perhaps we shouldn't be surprised. It is this same navel-gazing mixed with perpetual myopia that prevents Kyle from looking at his murders rationally, and by extension prevents Eastwood from seeing the 1,000,000 or so killed looking for phantoms WMDs that contextualize his film, and from 300 million from seeing that adjective as anything other than a fantasy of entitlement.