You can only circle the flames for so long......

Rating: 8/10 (18 January 2015)

U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle's pinpoint accuracy saves countless lives on the battlefield and, as stories of his courageous exploits spread, he earns the nickname "Legend."
His reputation is also growing behind enemy lines, putting a price on his head and making him a prime target of insurgents.
He is also facing a different kind of battle at home: striving to be a good husband and father from halfway around the world.
Despite the danger, as well as the toll on his family at home, Chris serves four tours of duty in Iraq, personifying the SEAL creed to "leave no man behind."
But upon returning to his wife and children, Chris finds that it is the war he can't leave behind........
War is hell. Yes we all know this, and Eastwood also knows that we know, so the predictable cliché isn't really rubbed in our face too much through this, sometimes pretty intense and gruelling return to form from the director, his best since Gran Torino.
What Eastwood focuses on is Kyle, and the demons he faces when he returns home from each duty, and how a person can become institutionalised to the war zone. During his tours, Kyle appears to be at ease behind the scope, calm and collected, when he's at his most focused.
Back at home, he appears to be unhinged, and at times, appears to be unapproachable, which is evident in the scene where a fellow soldier thanks him and tells his son his dad is a hero, the reaction is almost autonomous, and it appears that he shuts off to the world.
In his head, is he a hero? Yes, he protects his country, his family, his future, but what he has to do to fulfil this, is sometimes unthinkable, and the fact that he has to live with his decisions, however right they are, are also unimaginable.
Cooper is once again showing that he has so much range, and those blasted Hangover movies are a million miles away from the roles he has now. And it shows with his third nomination in as many years. The intensity he has with Kyle is astounding, and sometimes it's pretty unsettling.
Miller also is showing that she is becoming an actress to be taken seriously, again, light years away from Layer Cake, and being Laws other half.
Yes at times, it's very patriotic, but with a title like this, I wouldn't have expected anything else. I would have like to have seen Spielberg's version though, having the story told from both sides of the war zone, but Eastwood is just as good at telling a story, and giving us amazing set pieces.
I didn't know the story of Kyle, so the very last scene was pretty shocking to me, which made me appreciate that little bit more.
Worth seeing.