Having approached "American Sniper" with some positive anticipation, due largely to my enthusiasm for both director Clint Eastwood and his star Bradly Cooper, my immediate reaction to it took me by surprise.
Within in the first ten minutes, I was overtaken with the dreaded feeling that this was a movie that I was not going to like, not even remotely. And I didn't, although I volunteered to wait it out and sit through its entirety.
The film, a biopic, celebrates a man who I'm not sure is exactly deserving of that celebration - an arrogant, self promoting Navy SEAL sniper who opts for four tours of duty in Iraq instead of time at home with his wife and kids - on the pretext that his need to kill is for his country. His straight-shooting wife, finally fed up, calls out his pious rationale as "bullshit."
And that word aptly describes the film itself, a movie that's so over-the-top right wing that it's like a bad Saturday Night Live parody.
Frankly, I found myself laughing at inappropriate moments.
An early scene in the film has the hero's deranged father teaching him how to be a man by taking him out hunting - to kill Bambi's mother - and a later sequence, staged at a shooting range, showcases a maimed vet who finally hits one of his targest and proclaims, "I got my balls back!"
There have been debates over exactly what "American Sniper" is. Is it a gung-ho pro-war film or a shrewd anti-war film? Or is it, somehow, both?
Well, the film that I sat through is more simplistic than than - a wet dream for avid advocates of the gun culture. It glorifies guns, period.
Bradley Cooper is solid as the intense, messed-up hero, but he's played similarly intense, messed-up guys in his last two films ("Silver Linings Playbook" and "American Hustle"). It's time for a change. Maybe a light romcom? And as his wife, Sienna Miller, a good actress, is hampered by a role that requires her to affect one agonized facial expression through at least three-quarters of this movie. I know exactly how she feels.
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