Saw this with six friends, everyone agreed, poorly done

Rating: 3/10 (7 December 2014)

Let's begin with the editing. The film was generically paced throughout. The editing served no greater purpose than to show what was going on and make it look like an action movie. At points during battle scenes the sequences of shots became meaningless and not progressive as we are just fed a usual diet of "cut to guy shooting, cut to people getting shot, cut to other guys, cut to some other people getting shot," rarely with interjecting character and emotion. Additionally, some scenes were just unnecessary, like the training scene at the beginning, at which point I was like, "why are we seeing this? Oh yeah, because every war movie just has to have the drill sergeant and training montage." Lame. The film is over two hours and there is little ebb and flow in story. We're at home, then combat, then no combat, then some more combat, etc.
Now the cinematography. Like the editing, it couldn't have been more standard. At points it even failed to light the characters' faces properly. The images were often flat and uninteresting. The cinematographer could have chosen to do something interesting with the sandstorm scene and maybe had the characters silhouetted, but no. It looked like a brownish filter was put over the lens so all we get is a murky frame. Very standard.
Now the writing. It's based off of a very nationalistic memoir, so don't expect it to dig into any moral or political issues of war. Honestly it does justice to the troops that we should be honoring and the protagonist in particular. But the protagonist is also pretty shallow. He has a one-track mind, that a soldier's duty is to kill, and he abides by this and nothing really challenges his ideas. The end. The protagonist also holds very masculine ideals of himself that it seems most males in America are socialized to hold. It doesn't question this. It embraces it. Especially in the scene where the father and son are going for some good old American hunting. The development of the character lies in his PTSD which would be interesting if it were dug into more, but the development of that remains surface level. I would complain that the housewife with the baby is a cliché if it weren't based off of a true story. The housewife actually has an emotionally compelling story but we don't see her out of the house and she remains loyal. And then the movie kind of just ends. The story never really felt like it climaxes, although I wasn't waiting for more. It's dedicated to its message of honoring those who fight for our country.
Your turn, Clint Eastwood. You get credit for the mediocre work of the cinematography and editing as well. You get credit for the unwavering patriotism evoked in the film and the bias towards the story. When we look at a film such as The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, we get riveting action, deep character study, and objectivity in examining political issues. Those films are infinitely more perceptive than Sniper.
Now the acting wasn't bad. Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller were both good. They did well with what they were given.
And lastly I just want to mention THE F***ING BABY. There is a scene between husband, wife, and baby and the baby is clearly a f***ing doll. It was laughably fake. Cooper holds the child in a medium shot where the doll's limbs are dangling, not clinging like babies do, and it looked really unnatural. People in the theater laughed out loud, including me. And the scene was supposed to be very serious.