Intense

Rating: 8/10 (18 January 2015)

Clint Eastwood adapts the autobiography of Chris Kyle, a Navy SEAL who had the most confirmed kills in the Iraq War. The film pretty much takes the same tack as The Hurt Locker in examining how war effects a man. There's obviously a lot more combat here than in Hurt Locker, and it's very much a war action movie. I didn't find it exploitative, though. Unlike the recent turd Fury, the combat sequences are intense, not "fun." The violence is wince-inducing, and you're just hoping to get through it. The film does question, just a little, the purpose of the war, but the protagonist never does. He never did. He was a soldier, and this was his job, to protect his men, and he was good at it. The film hinges on the performance of Bradley Cooper, and he is very good. Sienna Miller has the unfortunate role of the wife who worries and begs him to come back (all this material was done far better in The Hurt Locker).