Eastwood takes America on a tour of the Shock Corridor

Rating: 9/10 (6 March 2015)

American SNIPER ~~ Viewed at Cinestar Berlin, March 5, 2015.
It's,hard to tell whether Bradley Cooper as hero Chris Kyle --- is a sharp shooting junkie, just addicted to war, an unflagging American patriot, or maybe all three. In any case, a very strong but restrained Oscar worthy performance to say the least. As a Navy Seal trained super-sniper using state-of-the-art sniper equipment he volunteers for four consecutive hazardous combat missions in Iraq leaving his little children and constantly pregnant wife behind in small town Texas. The film opens with a scene of the superstar sniper viewing an Iraqi woman clad in black robes with a little boy at her side suspended in his cross-hairs. His finger is on the trigger as he carefully draws a bead, but -- a doting new father himself back home as we will soon find out -- he is anything but eager to gun down a defenseless civilian woman and a child. However, this is not just any innocent civilian woman and any child. The woman slips a bomb concealed in her robes to the boy and whispers something in his ears ~~ obviously instructions to run at the American armored car and soldiers down the street in a glorious kamikaze attack, kill a few of them and go to Heaven. BAM! The boy goes Down as the bomb falls harmlessly aside. The woman tries to retrieve the bomb to complete the suicide mission. BAM again -- That takes care of her as well -- with a big blotch of blood up against the wall. We then get the back story of how Kyle was trained as a boy by his father in the art of hunting with a rifle, how he grew up in the macho atmosphere of Rodeo bronc-busting and met his future wife during Seal training at a lowdown local saloon. Heavy duty physical training on the beach prepare the Seal volunteers for the arduous tasks ahead. Quick no- nonsense marriage. Off to Battle.
MIssion One. Back to the cross-hairs and the grim mission in a battered Iraqi city constantly under attack by Guerrilla Arab defenders. In an action to find Al-Zaqari, ruthless head of the Al-Qaeda enemy, Kyle and his cohorts ruthlessly roust civilian Arab families in their homes. In one seemingly ordinary household a stash of bombs and weapons is found concealed under the floorboards. One Iraqi father is ruthlessly gunned down by fellow Arabs for "talking with the enemy". This is a ruthless war on both sides of the fence. House to house and room to room -- no glorious battlefield vistas. Endless fierce shootouts ensue that make the Okay Corral look like a Girl Scouts picnic. From the scene of battle Kyle often chats with his anguished wife back home via cell phone. All she wants is for him to come home to his family. All he wants, it seems, is to keep shooting down more of the enemy. Big question: Who needs him more ~~ His country or His family? After a particularly furious battle -- in overpowering red darkness filling the screen for many minutes, Kyle has had enough and yells to his wife on the phone over the din that he is COMING HOME -- this time for good. At home he is obvious rattled by his lurid war experiences. He volunteers to assist other crippled and traumatized Iraqi war veterans in recovery. On February 2, 2013, one such veteran shoots him dead. Almost as big a shock as all that has gone before! The denouement of the film is the memorial service for Kyle with a stadium in Texas named after him. Lots of American flags but not waving too strongly. The end credits roll before a stunned German audience. Nobody leaves until the lights go up. A powerful non-judgemental Clint Eastwood Judgement. The American Gun Dream reconsidered. If anybody, Dirty Harry should know. Alex, Berlin
PS: Do you bleeding liberal punks out there feel lucky?