In all the hubbub this week about the 2015 Oscar nominations’ lack of diversity (and Lego love), you might have missed some news that wasn’t getting as much coverage online: How American Sniper managed to sneak away with six statue noms — despite being outgunned by nearly every other movie with sights set on Oscar gold this year. It’s not that American Sniper is bad, per se; it’s just that there are enough problems with it that pinning it with praise like it’s one of this year’s cinema saviors calls into question the Academy’s leadership in the war on waning theater attendance.
Is American Sniper really the movie we want to tell the viewing public is one of the finest examples of film released in 2014? Or is it more that a movie about a real-life G.I. Joe will play well to Main Street America and might actually get butts in seats?
Beers, wolves, Guardians of the Galaxy and creepy baby fingers after the jump...
Is American Sniper really the movie we want to tell the viewing public is one of the finest examples of film released in 2014? Or is it more that a movie about a real-life G.I. Joe will play well to Main Street America and might actually get butts in seats?
Beers, wolves, Guardians of the Galaxy and creepy baby fingers after the jump...
Getting butts in seats is one mission American Sniper will likely accomplish. It’s the only movie I saw this year on the Oscar nomination list — not based off a comic book (and also featuring Cooper) or about Martin Luther King Jr. — that had the crowd in my theater burst into legit applause. (This happened twice with the folks at my screening of American Sniper.)
American Sniper is an occasionally tense and somber look at combat and the way it ripples through the lives of those who have seen it and those left back home. But it also has some pretty obvious flaws that make the Oscar love perplexing.
First off is the antagonist facing off with legendary Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle, the eponymous American Sniper played by a beefed-up Bradley Cooper. Kyle's villainous counterpart on the home team is more comic book cornball than anything from the House of Marvel, busting out parkour moves over Iraqi rooftops as he picks off American soldiers from the distance. There are about two seconds dedicated to showing how this sinister sniper might be more a mirror image of Kyle rather than just another cookie-cutter baddie. While obvious, that would have made for a more challenging approach than the lazy good vs. evil narrative American Sniper seems comfortable with.
Next up on the complaint list there’s the suspension of disbelief–shattering-ly bad bits of CGI. From a lengthy flyover of Sadr City leading up to the film’s behind-enemy-lines climax that wouldn’t pass muster in a Call of Duty game, to a terrifying baby doll with CG wiggling fingers, to a trio of fake-looking helicopters we see repeatedly, American Sniper shows that even in 2014 we have a long to go before computer magic is going to be ready to replace putting a real object in front of a real camera. (Is it THAT expensive to rent a real damn helicopter for half a day of shooting?) Complaints about special effects would typically be reserved for big, dumb 3D blockbusters, but these blunders are so apparent it's hard to not knock American Sniper for them.
But the biggest fault of all might be that though Chris Kyle is really the only character we get to know at all, we end up learning so little about him. A more nuanced examination could have dived into some of the trickier and hard-to-talk-about aspects of heroes, legends and war itself. Instead we get a crash course in Chris Kyle 101 from two childhood flashbacks: Kyle’s dad teaching him how to hunt, and Kyle’s dad telling him there three types of people: sheep, wolves and sheepdogs willing to stand up the wolves to protect the flock. Kyle’s the third. Got it.
American Sniper's Kyle doesn’t take pleasure in killing. He’s dedicated to do what he can to protect his fellow soldier, including joining in some un-sniper-worthy tasks with grunts on the ground and making some self-sacrificing calls that put him in greater danger than hiding in a perch above the city. It's all very admirable, but a man doesn’t have to be a good person to be a hero. After all, dad and husband of the year trophies don’t mean much on the battlefield. So it seems a shame that Eastwood and Cooper weren’t willing to let Kyle come off as a bit more flawed. Maybe this was an attempt to not appear disrespectful to Kyle, who no doubt was a remarkable soldier, or to not alienate viewers who might find a more realistic dive into an American hero so recently in the news unpatriotic. (Side note: People tend to have a problem with their heroes possibly being pricks in real life, which has always seemed silly to me. I’d rather the folks on the front lines or in charge or — hell — in my favorite rock band be damn good at their jobs rather than the type of person I’d have a beer with.) Whatever the reason, for a story centered around one man I felt my understanding of the man behind the legend was about on par with a quick skimming of his Wikipedia page.
Should you see American Sniper?
There are a handful of moments in American Sniper like its gut-wrenching opening scene — which you may have already seen in pretty much its entirety via the trailer -- where the movie enters that haunting gray territory where Eastwood’s stronger films take us so well. I’ll also give it marks for seeming to navigate the minefield of being easy to label as anti- or pro-war, though it’s fair to say it’s also not really a “war movie” at all. But with its flaws and the repeated feeling that we’re just watching a series of disconnected combat missions (that are sometimes not even especially suspenseful), Eastwood’s latest falls short of the mark set by his pre-2010 filmography.
—Eric Pulsifer
American Sniper is an occasionally tense and somber look at combat and the way it ripples through the lives of those who have seen it and those left back home. But it also has some pretty obvious flaws that make the Oscar love perplexing.
First off is the antagonist facing off with legendary Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle, the eponymous American Sniper played by a beefed-up Bradley Cooper. Kyle's villainous counterpart on the home team is more comic book cornball than anything from the House of Marvel, busting out parkour moves over Iraqi rooftops as he picks off American soldiers from the distance. There are about two seconds dedicated to showing how this sinister sniper might be more a mirror image of Kyle rather than just another cookie-cutter baddie. While obvious, that would have made for a more challenging approach than the lazy good vs. evil narrative American Sniper seems comfortable with.
Next up on the complaint list there’s the suspension of disbelief–shattering-ly bad bits of CGI. From a lengthy flyover of Sadr City leading up to the film’s behind-enemy-lines climax that wouldn’t pass muster in a Call of Duty game, to a terrifying baby doll with CG wiggling fingers, to a trio of fake-looking helicopters we see repeatedly, American Sniper shows that even in 2014 we have a long to go before computer magic is going to be ready to replace putting a real object in front of a real camera. (Is it THAT expensive to rent a real damn helicopter for half a day of shooting?) Complaints about special effects would typically be reserved for big, dumb 3D blockbusters, but these blunders are so apparent it's hard to not knock American Sniper for them.
But the biggest fault of all might be that though Chris Kyle is really the only character we get to know at all, we end up learning so little about him. A more nuanced examination could have dived into some of the trickier and hard-to-talk-about aspects of heroes, legends and war itself. Instead we get a crash course in Chris Kyle 101 from two childhood flashbacks: Kyle’s dad teaching him how to hunt, and Kyle’s dad telling him there three types of people: sheep, wolves and sheepdogs willing to stand up the wolves to protect the flock. Kyle’s the third. Got it.
American Sniper's Kyle doesn’t take pleasure in killing. He’s dedicated to do what he can to protect his fellow soldier, including joining in some un-sniper-worthy tasks with grunts on the ground and making some self-sacrificing calls that put him in greater danger than hiding in a perch above the city. It's all very admirable, but a man doesn’t have to be a good person to be a hero. After all, dad and husband of the year trophies don’t mean much on the battlefield. So it seems a shame that Eastwood and Cooper weren’t willing to let Kyle come off as a bit more flawed. Maybe this was an attempt to not appear disrespectful to Kyle, who no doubt was a remarkable soldier, or to not alienate viewers who might find a more realistic dive into an American hero so recently in the news unpatriotic. (Side note: People tend to have a problem with their heroes possibly being pricks in real life, which has always seemed silly to me. I’d rather the folks on the front lines or in charge or — hell — in my favorite rock band be damn good at their jobs rather than the type of person I’d have a beer with.) Whatever the reason, for a story centered around one man I felt my understanding of the man behind the legend was about on par with a quick skimming of his Wikipedia page.
Should you see American Sniper?
There are a handful of moments in American Sniper like its gut-wrenching opening scene — which you may have already seen in pretty much its entirety via the trailer -- where the movie enters that haunting gray territory where Eastwood’s stronger films take us so well. I’ll also give it marks for seeming to navigate the minefield of being easy to label as anti- or pro-war, though it’s fair to say it’s also not really a “war movie” at all. But with its flaws and the repeated feeling that we’re just watching a series of disconnected combat missions (that are sometimes not even especially suspenseful), Eastwood’s latest falls short of the mark set by his pre-2010 filmography.
—Eric Pulsifer
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