Amer­i­can Sniper

To shoot or not to shoot? When we first see Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle (Bradley Coop­er) in Clint Eastwood’s grip­ping­ly made yet ide­o­log­i­cal­ly mud­dled war film, he’s faced with just such a conun­drum. This is his first of four tours of duty in Iraq, and he has to quick­ly deter­mine whether to put a bul­let in a child who may or may not be car­ry­ing a bomb toward a Marine foot patrol. It’s one of those hor­ri­ble choic­es unique to com­bat, and by putting it upfront, East­wood and screen­writer Jason Hall (adapt­ing the real-life Kyle’s book) imply that the film to fol­low will delve deeply in some tough moral questions.

That’s true to a point: Kyle’s ulti­mate deci­sion in this ter­ri­ble mat­ter is deferred for half-an-hour or so while the movie flash­es back to his Texas ado­les­cence. It’s an upbring­ing paint­ed in broad brush­strokes and absents the over­sat­u­rat­ed visu­al adorn­ments with which Eastwood’s fre­quent cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, Tom Stern, typ­i­cal­ly com­pos­es. Sim­ple or sim­plis­tic?: There’s the macho father who instills a love of guns and Amer­i­ca in Kyle. There are drunk­en nights out after the rodeo and a cheat­ing girl­friend to kick to the curb. There’s Kyle’s chance encounter with Taya (Sien­na Miller), the woman who will become his wife and moth­er his two chil­dren. And there’s the ⁹⁄₁₁ attacks (viewed in a quick cut­away to a news broad­cast), which act as the impe­tus for Kyle’s mil­i­tary career — dur­ing which time he will rack up the most con­firmed kills of any Unit­ed States ser­vice­man in history.

It’s dif­fi­cult to say if East­wood is being sub­tle or lazy with this straight­for­ward parade of good-ol’-American-boy tropes, but the director’s sober approach is intrigu­ing. Kyle was a con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure, vocal about his com­mit­ment to Christ and coun­try while report­ed­ly aug­ment­ing his biog­ra­phy with tales of shoot­ing a pair of Mex­i­can car­jack­ers and punch­ing out for­mer Min­neso­ta governor/​pro wrestler Jesse Ven­tu­ra. The way the bulked-up Coop­er plays him is much more min­i­mal­ist. Kyle is a seething hulk with a thou­sand-yard stare who is clear­ly keep­ing his wartime ago­nies to him­self. To do any­thing less would be a betray­al. This is a pow­er­ful one-note per­for­mance, so com­mit­ted­ly opaque that you keep lean­ing for­ward, wait­ing for the steroidal armour to crack.

East­wood doesn’t shy away from show­ing the bloody hor­rors of war, espe­cial­ly when a spec­tral Tal­iban antag­o­nist known as The Butch­er (Mido Hama­da) appears to pun­ish the pan­icked Iraqi pop­u­lace for con­sort­ing with the Amer­i­can invaders. Clint’s a genre guy at heart, and he’s at his best duti­ful­ly detail­ing the many skir­mish­es in which Kyle finds him­self. On the home­front, the film is on less sure foot­ing, espe­cial­ly in the way it treats Miller’s char­ac­ter — a mere cipher who gets to be preg­nant and wor­ried and lit­tle else.

There’s also the mat­ter of the abrupt finale, which plays with a rah-rah repul­sive­ness (in the blink­ered vein of Peter Berg’s atro­cious Lone Sur­vivor) that seems anti­thet­i­cal to the rest of the film. From stu­dious nuance to dis­tort­ed nation­al­ism — it leaves a very bad taste.