The good, bad and ugly of "American Sniper"

Few films in recent memory have divided public opinion like Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper, a film about Chris Kyle, the most deadly sniper in American military history. The critical divide neatly exooses America’s own political divisions. On the left, Matt Taibbi titled his review for Rolling Stone, “American Sniper is almost too dumb to criticise,” writing that, “the mere act of trying to make a typically Hollywoodian one-note fairy tale set in the middle of the insane moral morass that is/was the Iraq occupation is both dumber and more arrogant than anything George Bush or even Dick Cheney ever tried.” From the opposite perspective, influential conservative website RedState posted one review entitled, “If You Hate American Sniper, You're Probably Not American.” Lest you be unsure, that title is not ironic.

I decided to see it last week. I was apologetic and defensive when telling a couple friends of my plans. I sat down, popcorn in hand, expecting a simplistic, Manichean celebration of the Iraq War, a film I would enjoy more for pathetic appeal than anything else.

But… I was pleasantly surprised. Parts of this war film that aren’t actually war scenes are actually pretty damn good. It is a nuanced portrayal of PTSD, the psychic trauma of both war itself, and the warrior ethos that drives many soldiers. Rather than presenting a one-note glorification of the war, Eastwood forces the audience to question and at times bemoan Chris Kyle’s militaristic philosophy throughout the film.

Quite frankly, I don’t know how reviewers who considered this film wholly celebratory completely misunderstood this. Throughout the film, the precise characters fetishising violence are the same ones incapable of recognising its cost to themselves and to others. This happens from the get go. In one of the first scenes, Chris’ dad sits at the table and, over dinner, tells his sons, and by extension the audience, his violence-driven moral philosophy. He divides the world into three categories: sheep, wolves, and sheep dogs. Wolves are evil, they threaten the sheep, and only the sheep dogs “blessed with aggression” save us from chaos. This view only sees violence as solvable with further violence. It’s a shallow way of classifying people and situations, and to make sure the audience recognises the moral dangers of only relying upon force for justice, right after giving this viewpoint, the dad picks up his belt and threatens to beat his son while his wife uneasily looks on. Even in that moment of supposed moral clarity, the idea’s proponent is someone willing to whoop his son’s ass. That’s not a sympathetic individual, and we clearly are not meant to fully identify with his views.

In another scene, Chris runs into his brother just as he's preparing to fly from his own tour of duty in Iraq. In contrast to Chris who is full of vigour and couldn’t wait to return to Iraq, his brother is broken and says, “F**k this place.” Chris does not know how to react, and he is unable to understand his brother’s anger. The moral onus in the scene lies on Chris, as the audience readily understands his brother’s disdain for warfare. It’s the one who relishes violence who is incapable of human connection.

These are just two scenes, and the film contains plenty of other scenes critical of a pugnacious viewpoint. Until the redemptive conclusion of the film, Chris is incapable of empathy with his family or peers. That’s not a sympathetic protagonist who we are supposed to support without reservation.

In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been surprised this film is complex. Eastwood is often thought of publicly as a dyed in the wool conservative, a public reputation bolstered by his notoriously rambling performance at the 2012 Republic National Convention. But he’s not. Not in his life or art. Personally, he openly disapproved of American actions in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. According to Wikipedia, he once claimed his political views represented a fusion of Milton Friedman and Noam Chomsky, suggesting they would make an ideal presidential ticket.

Eastwood’s politics can’t be boxed in, and neither can his films. His Man With No Name trilogy contains one of the first Western anti-heroes, and decades later he made Unforgiven, the Best-Picture winning Western which explicitly critiques traditional Western narratives of good and bad, right and wrong. His Dirty Harry character is thought of as a pro-cop, pro-violence cliché, but in one of those films, cops are the very bad guys themselves.

More recently and relevantly, Eastwood made some of the more intelligent war films of the 2000s with Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. is about the Marine servicemen who raised the American flag on Iwo Jima in the now-iconic World War II photo. The film shows how the military and government officials knowingly spread lies for propagandistic purposes and that their care for soldiers is often mere lip-service which ends when the soldiers are no longer useful. Coming when it did in 2006, at the height of the Iraq War, it struck me as a clear and brave critique of the Bush administration’s manipulation of the truth and disregard for its soldiers.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that American Sniper is critical about the fetishisation of violence. But while it excels in some ways, the film is deeply troubled in other ways. The most boring scenes in this war film are the actual war scenes themselves. They are unintentionally parody, the epitome of Orientalist art. None of the Arabic spoken in the film is subtitled. The bad guys are literal unintelligible. Their motivations are never really considered, and they are simply evil.

This failure did surprise me. And disappoint me. It’s not as if Eastwood is incapable of showing empathising with America’s enemies. His other war film from 2006, Letters from Iwo Jima, is a very nuanced portrayal of Japanese soldiers in World War II. The film is full of dialogue and reflection from the very people killing Americans. Eastwood has the ability to offer humanity to American enemies on screen. But he doesn’t do that in his films about Iraq. Truthfully, none of the major films about America in Iraq, like The Hurt Locker or Zero Dark Thirty focus on the American experience of the war, and even in their limited depiction of the enemy, they rarely present fully-fleshed, thoughtful characters. This myopia is not unique to the Iraq War. The great films about the Vietnam War - The Deer Hunter, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, and Apocalypse Now and for example - are much more openly critical of the American war effort than the films about Iraq, and yet even in those example, they are American-centric. The greatest tragedy of the war is how it impacts Americans, the boys dying overseas in a senseless war, rather than the innocents in Vietnam harmed by American actions.

Eastwood’s film is a good one, and he directly confronts the audience with the toll of war on the battlefield and home front. But the film can’t thoughtfully wrestle with the Other and the motivations of our enemy. Sadly, we still can’t do that in acceptable political discourse. We get the movies and wars we deserve.