A extremely polished picture of a complex war

Rating: 7/10 (8 November 2015)

American sniper is not a bad movie, not at all. But it suffers from heavy patriotism and lack of self-distance which narrows the war and it's players down to the simplest of terms: the Americans are the heroes who can do nothing wrong and the Iraqies are the villains who are wicked by nature.
It's to the point that it can be used as a recruitment video for the Navy Seals, and I'm sure that many American children watching it will want to grow up to become snipers themselves and fight for the American way.
One could argue though that the whole movie is seen from Chris Kyle's perspective but even so, I'm sure that he witnessed a far more complex situation with plenty of grey areas and not just everything in black and white as what we witnessed on screen.
If you can look aside that it's a fairly enjoyable tale, with pretty natural acting with Bradley Cooper in a more restrictive performance than we are used to from him alongside a thick Texas accent... Was it worthy a Oscar-nominated performance? That I don't know. But it was good enough, just like the movie.
American patriots will love it, while the rest of us have to take it with a little grain of salt.