American Sniper is the latest movie with Clint Eastwood in the directors chair. It stars Bradley Cooper as Chis Kyle, the legendary "most deadly sniper" in American history. The film follows Kyle from his child hood through his young days in the rodeo and moves to him joining the Navy Seals and his four tours in Iraq, all while building a family. Since this movie is so highly anticipated I will try to keep this brief and spoiler free.
Chris Kyle is born a young country boy who was raised with a very strict religious background and a father who instills in his sons a strong need to protect those around them. This leads him to enlist in the military when he becomes a young adult and makes it into the prestigious ranks of the Navy Seals. Having a family history of hunting in him, he naturally moves into an over watch sniper position and builds a strong reputation for always watching the backs of the Marines below him. At the same time he has married a woman back home who he only gets to see for short periods at time in between his leave and time between tours. Although that doesn't stop them from having two kids and adding more pressure on their already strained marriage due to the fact that he is always away and has trouble adjusting when he is back. Driven by his need to protect his fellow men Kyle puts himself in more and more dangerous situations rather than remain in over watch to ensure himself that things go well. This becomes amplified by the arrival of "The Butcher", an immensely talented sniper working with the Iraqis insurgence and starts accumulating a long list of kills. The majority of the film centers around Kyle trying to balance his need to protect his friends while still maintaining a normal life, all the while being chased by the reputation that he has built as being the deadliest sniper and his ability to reconcile the lives that he has taken with himself.
The shining star in the movie is clearly Cooper. He blew audiences away with his on screen energy in the Silver Linings Playbook, but here it is is subtlety and silent intensity that steals the show. When he makes his first kill in combat you see every emotion that he goes through quietly through his eyes alone. In fact several scenes in the movie show him going through a wide range of emotions while he stares through his scope. Then Cooper uses an almost new found talent of body language to express the stress that he is experiencing, which is a huge turn around from his trademark facial acting which have been his bread and butter so far. I'm not saying I am surprised by is performance as much as i am impressed with the speed in which he seems to be improving between roles.
The rest of the movie does tend to become a little bland at times, almost a little repetitive. There isn't much to say for a score and Eastwood's tempo for the film seems to want to crawl at the same pace that the stress is building for Kyle. That being said the last 30 minutes or so build up a very good amount of tension that give the film a really good finish. If you don't know Kyle's story then by all means avoid it at all costs prior to seeing the movie....just trust me on this. I didn't know anything about him and it made the ending so much better. I definitely recommend the movie, over all it gives a unique look into the life of soldiers that we normally tend to take for granted.
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