Eastwood's portrait of famed sniper is pretty much a white wash but that does not preclude the film from being entertaining

Rating: 6/10 (7 April 2015)

"American Sniper" is based on the best-selling memoir of sniper extraordinaire, Chris Kyle, aka "The Legend," responsible for those "160 kills" during the war in Iraq. It's basically an action film focusing on Kyle's four tours of duty in Iraq as well as the relationship he had with his wife, when he was back on the home front.
Director Clint Eastwood's main dilemma is how to flesh out Kyle without turning him into a saint. The best Eastwood can come up with is to suggest that Kyle may have been a victim of PTSD (this is suggested when Kyle tells his wife he's coming home after enduring a particularly hellish encounter with a mass of armed insurgents, at the end of his fourth tour of duty). Eastwood might have felt it necessary to play down Kyle's "gung-ho" attitude toward the war a bit as it might not sit well with those who can't imagine that some soldiers simply enjoyed being in combat (like Kyle) and weren't all victims of PTSD. But significantly Eastwood leaves in a scene toward the climax when Kyle emphatically denies that he's a PTSD victim to an Army psychiatrist, after almost losing it when a dog gets a little too frisky with one of his kids during a family barbecue. This seems much more realistic than the film's scenarist's apparently invented explanation that he finally came home due to "stress."
Amy Nicholson, of The Village Voice, is on to something when she writes that, "the humble Kyle on screen is Kyle with his flaws written out. We're not watching a biopic. We're watching a drama about an idealized soldier, a patriot beyond reproach, which bolsters Kyle's legend while gutting the man." Nicholson is mainly referring to three troubling facts about Kyle that Eastwood conveniently leaves out of his hagiography. First and foremost is the troubling lawsuit that Jesse Ventura won against Kyle's estate after his death. Ventura claimed that Kyle defamed him, falsely claiming that they had engaged in a barroom brawl. There were also troubling unsubstantiated stories such as Kyle's claims that he picked off looters during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and killed two carjackers in Texas after they tried to rob him.
Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune also promotes this idea that Eastwood plays down some of the more troubling aspects of Kyle's character: "American Sniper," from a script by Jason Hall, soft-pedals the book's version of Kyle's bar-brawling, God-fearing zealotry, making him a more humble and companionable movie hero caught in a war Eastwood has no interest in putting up for geopolitical discussion."
Xan Brooks of The Guardian, also bemoans Eastwood's simplistic analysis of the Iraqi War: "It's just that American Sniper is so conditioned by its first-person shooter aesthetic that it never widens its focus or pans left or right. Kyle's wife is left hanging, while the war on Iraq is a just, noble cause. Meanwhile the Iraqis are reduced to a band of shadowy savages, darting like phantoms through the alleyways and led by a terrorist Satan who likes killing small boys with a drill. No doubt this sensibility reflects Kyle's experience and if so, that's fine. But I couldn't help feeling that the film rather risks letting its man off the hook. In failing to interrogate the raw matter of Kyle's book, it simply decides to print the legend instead."
The early sequences in the film prove effective as they are true to Kyle's recollections of a strict father who trained him how to shoot and emphasized the importance of finishing a fight. But it's surprising to discover that the confrontation with a cheating girlfriend never happened and Kyle's motivation for joining the SEALS had nothing to do with watching the bombing of the American Embassy in Kenya on TV (Kyle had always intended to join the military after he finished attending school).
Kyle's relations with his wife Taya is pretty accurately portrayed, including their many arguments about being away from his family. In one action scene, Kyle drops his phone and Taya is horrified to hear the sounds of battle, without Kyle responding. This is an event that actually happened. Kyle's decision to finally return home after the fourth tour was much more likely related to his fears that Taya was going to divorce him than being depressed about killing the rival sniper Mustafa or being almost killed during the culminating firefight.
One scene that's not mentioned in Kyle's memoir is when he and his fellow soldiers are invited to dinner by an Iraqi man and his family. During this dinner, Kyle leaves the dinner table and discovers a cache of guns under a floorboard. While it's quite an exciting scene, Kyle as an intrepid investigator, proves to be a fictional conceit! The big dramatic moment when Kyle kills rival sniper, Mustafa, is also a work of fiction. Kyle only mentions Mustafa in one paragraph in his memoir and stated that other snipers may have killed him (but this was never confirmed).
"American Sniper" has some excellent combat sequences and will keep you glued to your seat while those are going on. But the scenes of domestic disharmony between Kyle and his wife prove to be somewhat repetitious and lugubrious. If you're looking for a complex portrait of an American soldier, you will not find it here. Eastwood's take is pretty much a white wash, although this does not preclude the film from being pretty entertaining.