Good character drama, controversial war film

Rating: 7/10 (5 May 2015)

Every once in a while, there comes a film that sparks so much controversy that it becomes impossible to simply watch it as a 'film.' American Sniper is one of those films, having been accused of glorifying America's deadliest military sniper, its racist portrayal of the Iraqi people, etc. So when I stepped into the theater and sat down in my little seat, I realized I couldn't simply review American Sniper and blandly point out its strengths and flaws; it'd be a question of whether or not all the controversy is justified or not.
But first the story. We see Chris Kyle with a fellow soldier on a rooftop, overlooking a convoy. He spots an Iraqi boy running toward the convoy with a grenade. Kyle's faced with a dilemma and at the moment suprême, the film cuts to the moment he shot a deer under the watchful eyes of his proud father. After Chris saves his little brother from being bullied, his father tells them there are three kinds of people: sheep, wolves and sheepdogs. Symbolically, the father lays the groundwork for Chris's compulsion to protect others/sheep. So when 9/11 takes place, he instinctively feels the need to jump to the rescue. Just like his father gave him permission to beat the kid who bullied his kid brother, he now gives himself permission to attack those who attacked America.
The film's mainly interested in the ways Chris's time in Iraq profoundly influences his family life back home. On the one hand, he feels compelled to 'do his duty' in Iraq, but on the other hand this also undermines his bond with his loved ones, because even when he's home, he's 'away.' To the film's credit, it does succeed in making you understand his desire to go back to Iraq, especially after one of his tours ends bloody. You understand why simply going home and letting others take over doesn't feel right in his eyes. He can only truly return to his family life if he achieves some sort of closure. (Whether or not that's truly possible for traumatized war veterans is another story.) This is nicely emphasized through the sound design as a sound at one scene's end pours over into the next: in other words, what happens in one scene isn't a singular problem, but something that continues to haunt those involved.
And so we arrive at the million dollar question: is the film too 'American,' racist and so on? Basically yeah. Figuring out why this film was received the way it was isn't exactly rocket science. I mean, even the poster's got an American flag gently flapping in the breeze. There's also the fact that Chris justifies his actions as being right. There are also little to no nice Iraqi citizens with most of them being made up of Stormtroopers, aka cannon fodder for the Americans. The biggest mishit is by far Mustafa, an extremely talented Iraqi sniper whose sole function is to be the final boss for Chris. He's a typical bad guy straight out of a nineties action flick who's presence on screen is punctuated by brooding, evil synthesizer tones. That's also what bugged me about the music in general. Even when Chris ponders whether or not to shoot, the music feels compelled to emphasize the moral dilemma with an oh-so subtle DUN-DUUUUNNN. If this were a random action flick it would've been fine, but a war film that aims to be 'realistic'
So yeah, the film's highly problematic, but I feel all this controversy stems from the notion that to show something is to immediately glorify it. But this doesn't have to be the case. Take Full Metal Jacket. Very few Vietnamese ever appear on screen. One scene shows them as shadowy figures in the distance as they're being taken prisoner. Do we immediately accuse Kubrick of racism? No, of course not. Kubrick realized he was showing the Vietnam War from an American point of view. Because the American troops have been trained to kill and have worries of their own, it's extremely difficult for them to truly care for the plight of the Vietnamese people as every one of them might be an enemy. We see the Vietnamese as shadowy figures, because the Americans can't afford to see them as human and that's the real tragedy. You could look at American Sniper in similar fashion. The film's not designed as a political thesis about America and Iraq, but is purely interested in Chris's experiences, how his beliefs are tested and how his traumas affect him. We get the scene with the father, so we understand his eventual desire to go to Iraq, we get a few gruesome scenes so we understand why he feels compelled to go back. So yeah, the film's 'American' to a fault, but I do feel the decision to focus on Chris necessitated an 'American' point of view by default.
Also, there are enough scenes that undermine the whole pro-America point of view. When Chris convinces a doubting soldier that there's evil here (in Iraq), the soldier responds that there's evil everywhere. Chris is occasionally confronted with those whose ideas and morals conflict with his, which in turn compels him to justify and rationalize his actions even more. If he's not convinced he's doing the right thing, how could he look at himself in the mirror after over at least 160 kills? From this perspective, it seems like the film argues that patriotism is nothing but a way to suppress one's guilt.
Anyway, I didn't direct the film. I don't know if what I'm saying here was part of the film's intended message. What I do know is that, regardless of whether or not the film's 'good' or not, you can at least justify some of the film's lesser qualities as being necessitated by the film's American point of view.