American Sniper

This movie was difficult.

I mean its quite the change of pace, especially since I've been doing nothing but watching cartoons and light hearted family films recently, this was just a disturbing change of pace.

Furthermore, being a member of the armed services, there was a lot of elements of this movie that really hit close to home and just made the movie all around difficult. While I would never brag about my limited experience in the military, I know people and a lot parts of this movie kind hit me hard.

American Sniper focuses on the true story of Navy SEAL and Sniper, Chris Kyle (played by Bradley Cooper). The short summary of the film is that it is a biopic on the man and his experience as the US military's "most lethal sniper" with an estimated 160 confirmed kills with a lot still unconfirmed.

As this film is based off an autobiography, the movie is a character study on a man who made killing and defending his country his life.

From the beginning, the set up is great, introducing Kyle as an arrogant and deeply patriotic man who eventually joins the Marines and eventually the Marines. Eventually 9/11 happens and Kyle is sent to Iraq to "fight the savages" and defend America.

In the introduction, Kyle meets his wife (played by Sienna Miller) and she finds herself struggling with the fact that her husband seems put the love for his family secondary to the love he has for his country and the marines.

But further more, as Kyle gains the reputation of the "most lethal sniper in US history" he finds himself in situations where he must question how far he's willing to go to defend his country, including shooting children who are being used to hurt his fellow soldiers.

As I said before, this movie is mainly a characters study. The main draw of this movie is the character and the performance given by Bradley Cooper. The guy is absolutely phenomenal in this film. If you think that kind of patriotism, confidence, and just down right love for America is exaggerated, then you definitely haven't met anybody in the Marines. I've seen these kind of guys before and they are the ones who love the military and their country above everything else. So much that when marines are killed, even if he had no way of preventing it, he feels incredible guilt and remorse.

Of course when you're taking on a subject matter like this, the movie is going to be intense. Its a war movie, what did you expect? Now I like to think I've seen a lot of intense war movies. Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, etc. But dear god, I don't know if I've seen a movie this intense in a long, long time.

This movie is really just amazing. The sound and the visuals are incredible in this film. I have to give Clint Eastwood a hand with this one. The entire direction of the film, for the most part, is really good as far as the senses go. And with the combination of that and the performances of Cooper and Miller and the other actors in the show, its hard not to get invested with these characters and on edge as there's gunfire everywhere.

Furthermore, the story is really fascinating.

I unfortunately did not know that much about Chris Kyle prior to this film and that is really a shame because the story is really compelling. I sometimes have a hard time with biopics because the film doesn't go in the way a story actually should be structured. Its real life, it doesn't quite happen like that.

But Kyle's story is really freaking good and Bradley Cooper just gives it the most justice it could ever be given really.

Now... that's not to say that the movie isn't totally void of problems. The film is just littered with an ideology of patriotism and a sure fire reliance of American exceptionalism, especially in the troops. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. In many ways the movie feels like a honoring of an American hero. I just think there's some points of view that people may not agree with. And since this is more of a character study and not a political drama, they don't really explore it too much.

 And that's another part, there's a few things they introduce, but never really fully develop. Again, its based off a true story so not everything is going to resolve itself, there were just parts of the film that I felt didn't exactly go that far. Nothing overly distracting, just a couple things left unresolved.

The other part of the film that threw me off was the Hollywoodization of the story. I don't know what was accurate and what was exaggerated, but many times the movie felt like if a Call of Duty game had incredible character development and surround sound, American Sniper would be that movie. Its so intense yet so real that the nerves I had during this movie was just beyond belief.

I hope me calling this movie a really well done Call of Duty game doesn't make it sound like I'm disrespecting the life of Chris Kyle, because I'm sure a lot of it is accurate, all I'm saying is that if they were ever going to make a Call of Duty movie, this is the kind of movie I would want it to be like.

I don't think I'm explaining this slight complaint I have with the movie that well. In short, I felt like a lot of it was sensationalized to give a Hollywood action military movie out of a biopic. Its kind of what happened with The Hurt Locker. Probably pretty realistic but a lot of it was sensationalized for the movie going audience to enjoy the flick.

Overall, the film is really good. Since the movie is mainly focused on Bradley Cooper's performance, all I can say is, I'm not surprised that he got nominated for an Oscar. Other than that the movie was difficult to watch (not a bad thing necessarily) and intense as hell. If you like War movies you'll be right at home and this will, I think, be a new experience. If anything, go to this movie just to see a great performance by Bradley Cooper. I'm not sure the movie will win Best Picture, but Bradley Cooper is definitely in the running for Best Actor.

But those are my thoughts on American Sniper. Hopefully I'll be reviewing more Oscar Flicks but we'll see what I can get my hands on. Do you have any requests? Anything I need to see? What are your thoughts on the Oscar race? Where does American Sniper fall in this race? Comment and Discuss Below! And Follow me on Twitter @cmhaugen24