American Sniper ** ½

Dir:  Clint Eastwood

Starring: Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, Sammy Sheikh

Clint Eastwood’s latest, a bio-pic of Chris Kyle, the deadliest sniper in American military history, with 160 confirmed kills (and another 95 unconfirmed), was the most successful movie released in 2014 at the American box-office. It also picked up 6 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay (from Kyle’s autobiography) and Best Actor (Bradley Cooper), winning for Best Sound Editing. But does it really deserve all that success and accolades?

Contrary to some opinions, this is not a simplistic pro-war movie.Eastwood is too intelligent a filmmaker for that.

There is hardly ever any glory in war and Eastwood knows that and even lets you know that through his depiction of the gradual deadening of the protagonist’s soul (nicely played by Cooper) as he suffers through post-traumatic-stress-disorder through four tours of duty in Iraq.

Another soldier in the film raises some difficult questions about the nature of war in general and the American war in Iraq in specific. Near the end Eastwood gives us a blinding sandstorm scene, a neat metaphor of the boundaries that get blurred during wartime.

But, despite all this, the movie is too "American". It is only concerned with the impact of the Iraq war on American lives.

The Iraqis are only depicted in broad strokes, basically as the "savages" that Kyle calls them. Kyle and his fellow soldiers are mostly noble (if sometimes conflicted) in comparison.

The only enemy combatant to get any sustained screen time is Kyle’s counterpart – a Syrian sniper (Sammy Sheikh) who may just be Kyle’s equal in skill but is certainly "evil". He also gets no lines to speak - which only serves to further dehumanise him. The final duel between him and Kyle is pure Hollywood, utilizing both slo-mo and a bullet-tracking-point-of-view shot. It is also complete hokum - the Syrian sniper is a cinematic creation, with no real basis in fact.

Eastwood may have been giving us a movie from purely Chris Kyle’s world view but the world isn’t that black or white and it isn’t just red, white and blue, either.

Cut to chase: Too American in its point of view.