Quite a good film but possibly the most polarising of all time?

Rating: 7/10 (28 February 2015)

Judged as a film alone this is a pretty good story. Clint Eastwood directs well, the cast do a fine job, the action sequences are exciting and it walks a fine line with it's tone, veering effectively between 'war is hell' clichés and celebrating Kyle's undoubted skill and bravery. It doesn't depict war as anything but brutal and horrific and the traumatising effect it has on its' participants is plain for all to see. Having read the book my main complaint was that we don't get to see the beach-ball story (a group of 16 insurgents using beach-balls as flotation devices to attack a US position via a river, Kyle letting them get midstream then shooting out the beach-balls and letting them drown, killing sixteen enemy using only four shots) or what he actually earned his medals for, rescuing wounded Marines on a couple of occasions. If I was a to pick a favourite scene it's him killing an insurgent and his spotter not even acknowledging it, so routine has this become or him winning his future wife's hearts by holding her hair up when she drunkenly vomits on their first meeting (who says romance is dead?).
What's amazing about this film is the visceral reaction to it from its' opponents who simply cannot accept it because it differs from their own viewpoint, Kyle derided as a bloodthirsty racist killing machine monster of big oil war criminals who wish to poison the children of Iraq with depleted uranium and re-establish colonialism, the entire film a work of slanted propaganda and wishing they could give it less than one star as a rating. The only conclusion you can reach is that left-wingers are deeply intolerant people who don't countenance views different to their own or that possibly they heard the hype and hadn't seen the film? I wonder if Audie Murphy or Alvin York ever had to put up with this kind of disgusting abuse?
For the record Kyle never claimed to have shot looters after Hurricane Katrina, he merely discussed rumours of other special forces soldiers doing that with another SEAL. No one has ever been able to substantiate the story of shooting 2 car-jackers one way or the other nor the facts of his drunken brawl with Jesse Ventura, Kyle being dead before the case came to court so not being able to give his side (I'm happy to put it down to alcohol and PTSD on both sides).
So, ignore the American Sniper bashers, it's a great film, see it with an open mind and decide for yourself.