"Thou shalt not kill" anyone?

Rating: 1/10 (4 April 2015)

I can't fathom how such a terribly one dimensional, cardboard cliché and vapid movie could possibly be considered as "good" drama and art. The only real tragedy of this movie is that such odious crap as this is devoured down by the ultra jingoistic brainwashed multitudes without a second thought as to what constitutes as even palatable art. The only redeeming quality of the movie is the action scenes with the terrorist Chris Kyle, which I admit were stimulating; otherwise this movie is god awful trash. To start the movie was too dichotomized; this is even lampshaded where Chris Kyle gives his binary view of the world in the beginning: you're either a good guy or an evil wolf. To add insult to injury this movie portrays the deranged psychopath Chris Kyle as the good guy and the Iraqis as the savages, which is totally ironically inverted. Great nuance there Eastwood! I mean, throughout the movie every single Iraqi who gets killed just so happened to be a grenade wielding terrorist, kids and adults alike, reinforcing the prejudice that ALL Iraqis are latent terrorists, even the ones who are resisting the depredation of the imperialist invaders. The fact that resisting an unjust occupation makes you a terrorist is the most blatantly inane sophistry I've ever heard. The fact that Chris Kyle just blithely kills Iraqis under the pretext of protecting his comrades proves he's nothing more than a pernicious psychopath. Those Iraqis had families too, they had livelihoods, dreams, ambitions, yet the only ones that mattered are those of the American invaders? Logic much? That is what any rudimentary story teller will censure as being terrible storytelling, where there's no moral complexity, no moral quandary nor impasse; everything the Jesus Messiah Chris Kyle does is ipso facto correct which makes the story bland and way too cliché. A story about an illegal invasion had so much potential for nuance, grayness and complexity, but no, the average myopic American would rather watch hours of saturated propaganda with a protagonist as complex as Patrick Star from Spongebob for hours like the good little drone they are. I mentioned this earlier but the movie is also unsavorily racist. What message are you sending to your kids who're watching this movie when for hours straight they watch Iraqi men, women and children being depicted as miscreant terrorists whose only function in the movie is to act as a plot device by being mowed down like grass by Chris Kyle so he can "save his comrades". Not only is that obviously racist but it's terrible writing and a crude plot device to turn every character besides the main cast into worthless cannon fodder. The Iraqis are all portrayed as cardboard pernicious villains whose only lot in life is to perpetuate evil and block "democracy" wherever they go. The rather obvious resistance motivation doesn't exist to make this movie more multi- dimensional, it's the Iraqis have homicidal propensities by default, nothing more nothing less. Portraying people who resist an invasion as being nefarious and malevolent while the invaders are benevolent liberators is just disgusting propaganda which vindicates the oppressors and criminalizes the oppressed, nothing more nothing less. The penchant for this movie to approbate mass murder as being heroic is abhorrent. The fact that nowhere in the movie does Chris Kyle show a shred of compunction nor contrition shows not only that Chris Kyle was a murderer but that murder is a virtue. The irony of it all is that Chris Kyle is portrayed epitomizing the heroic Christian while omitting the whole "Thou shalt not kill" commandment. Don't get me wrong killing is justified under self defense, but it was America that attacked Iraq, not the other way around, so how is it defense? The movie takes an abhorrent taboo against every culture, unjustified killing, and seems to whitewash and laud that which should be condemned. The doublespeak in this movie would even make Orwell proud; let's not call it killing, let's call it protecting comrades. By that same awful sophistry the Japanese weren't wantonly brutalizing the Chinese in the Rape of Nanking, that was only the Japanese looking out for themselves and protecting themselves. A murderer by any other name is just as reprehensible. The fact that there was such a palpable dissonance in the movie and was never brought up by any of the characters, be it Chris, his colleagues, or his enemies, is just terrible writing. Any real story shows you not just one paradigm but several to balance them out; apparently Clint Eastwood never took a writing class before. When the cliché mantra is shoved down your throat throughout the movie without any real conflict then it's really hard to take the movie as being any deeper than SpongeBob. "Despite what your parents may say, it is okay to kill". The world has enough bloodshed as it is; a movie which depicts killing and extirpating others as being "awesome" and "cool" without any objection isn't ameliorating anything, it only perpetuates the problem. Depicting murderers like Chris Kyle as brave is an insult to the actual bona fide valiant heroes throughout history. A guy dressed in body armor, brandishing the latest weapons and shooting random Iraqis from a secure location isn't brave in my book. Those 10 year old Iraqi "terrorists" who stand up to American tanks a hundred times their size are the real brave heroes. Or those soldiers who disobey their orders to randomly shoot innocent Iraqis are also brave, along with those who are harassed for speaking out against this unjust war. By telling kids that going to random overseas countries and blindly obeying orders to slaughter people you don't even know without even understanding why as being the pinnacle of bravery do you wonder why certain parts of the world detest us? If my review offended anyone here I apologize I didn't make it any more offensive.