American Sniper (2014) Movie Review

By far best performance of former comedy star Bradley Cooper’s career. American Sniper, based off the autobiography of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle’s experience in the War on Terror, is one of the best war movies of all time. In this Hollywood film adaptation, Cooper was stellar as the steadfast, patriotic, and loving man, Chris Kyle.

The film is already considered one of director Clint Eastwood’s best movies. While normally the former spaghetti western actor directing expeditions are met with criticism, Eastwood struck gold with this modern-day masterpiece. Following his disastrous Jersey Boys adaptation, Eastwood took the elements of patriotism and family in Kyle’s life and fused the two perfectly with a nice touch of humor incorporated as well.

The movie was solid and inspirational at the same time. When exiting the movie theater, I caught (some people call it eavesdropping) two contrasting conversations. The first being a couple complementing the patriotism exalted through Cooper’s performance and Chris Kyle’s life, while the second questioned the film and their emotional investment in it.

Now, when the film is compared with the book, the book ultimately wins. As someone who read the autobiography, I saw some key components either skipped over or not emphasized/downsized. For the first half of the autobiography, Kyle depicts his Texan upbringing and the rigorous SEAL training as well as “Hell Week.” In the movie, this is only briefly shown as it quickly jumps to the romantic side and deployment. In addition to the training exclusion, the film downplays the battles of Fallujah and Ramadi. The film does depict both battles to a certain extent. In its replacement is the battle to kill the Syrian Olympian Sniper by the name of “Mustafa.” This was a factor in Kyle’s tours, but the film really did not emphasize Kyle’s presence and importance in each of those battles besides for the car garage scene later on in the movie.
Overall, the movie was superb with great acting that complemented the strong emotion of patriotism and family. Besides the funny banter between SEALs and good dramatic scenes, the best scene by far was the closing of the film. The end of the film or the credits showed the enormous support during his funeral procession in real life that silenced the audience at theater.