A propaganda movie to legitimate that USA invades other countries

Rating: 5/10 (20 February 2015)

In spite of his extremely conservative political view, Clint Eastwood has already showed that he may be a quite sensible director, in movies such as "Gran Torino", "Million Dollar Baby", "Invictus" and "Unforgiven". Though, "American Sniper" reinforces the bad conventional wisdom about him, as a macho cowboy who loves guns and do not care about their effects. It is a militaristic and imperialist propaganda, which tries to legitimate the aggressive foreign policy developed by the United States. The film simply does not discuss why Iraqi children, women and obviously less equipped men tried to kill those servicemen from USA, who were invading their country, their homes, harming their families. Television shows the 9-11 attack, but is it that automatic to view the invasion of other countries as the way to defend the United States (Bush doctrine)? The sniper and other SEALs are shown calling Iraqi as "savages", arguing that US is the most important country in the world and might be defended... quotes of stupid people, which would dampen any credibility in the eyes of more critical viewers, but how many spectators will not notice that and simply support that USA invades other countries? The movie shows rebels as sadistic criminals who damage the local population, what is convenient for the support of Bush doctrine, but is that fair? Why local people supported them? Are American soldiers less sadistic? Were American soldiers just defending their colleagues (who were invading Iraq!) and were the rebels assassins who wanted to murder Westerners (and not to protect their country and people)? The sniper from the other side, Mustafa, could have been much better developed, showing the feelings of the enemies, but director's blind patriotism did not allow it. In the first part, the movie reminds a lot Brazilian "Elite Squad", which shares the main good and bad traits: very entertaining, technically well done (Eastwood made amazing war scenes), but supporting bad practices from the troops (in the Brazilian case, it supports torture and disrespect for human rights in the invasion of the homes of poor people in slums in Rio de Janeiro by the BOPE, an elite group of military police as the SEAL is for US Navy). The biggest resemblance, though, refers to the heavy "Full Metal Jacket"-style training of servicemen. A very bizarre and disappointing thing in "American Sniper" is that the main character is humanized after that, while we could expect that he would become even more violent and nervous than he was in the cowboy days of the beginning. His family life is by far the most interesting issue in the movie, but the bad political job in the war footage obfuscates it. There is something odd in Hollywood war movies: they are seldom critical about USA, dealing with the conflicts as good Americans against evil foreigners or, when this approach is almost impossible (like in films on Vietnam War), they focus the internal psychological problems of soldiers and veterans, not caring about the aggression per se, as there were only citizens from US suffering and no people being slaughtered by them. To resume, although "American Sniper" is technically well done, it is the worst film directed by Clint Eastwood ever (or at least for a long time). The patriotic melodrama in the end does not help to change this opinion. Cold murderers are not heroes.