Posted on 01/15/2015 9:05:34 AM PST by walford
Spouting off to an empty chair at the 2012 Republican National Convention, Clint Eastwood looked as if he were slipping into doddering dementia, but he’s shrewder and more focused than ever in his Iraq War picture American Sniper. It’s a crackerjack piece of filmmaking, a declaration that he’s not yet ready to be classified as an Old Master, that he can out-Bigelow Kathryn Bigelow. Morally, though, he has regressed from the heights of Letters From Iwo Jima (2006). In more ways than one, the Iraq occupation is seen through the sight of a high-powered rifle. The movie is scandalously blinkered.
Its springboard is the tragically murdered Chris Kyle’s best-selling memoir (written with Jim DeFelice), which chronicled his tours in Iraq as a Navy seal and his acquisition—thanks to an unprecedented number of sniper kills—of the sobriquet “the Legend.” I’m not going to fault Kyle’s view of his enemies as representing a “savage, despicable evil,” but I do fault Eastwood for making what is, essentially, a propaganda film.
The script, by Jason Hall, shows Kyle (Bradley Cooper) watching the Twin Towers fall on 9/11 and enlisting, having learned from his dad that the world consists of “sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs,” and that he must be the last—a protector. Then, after disarming and winning a woman named Taya (Sienna Miller), he’s off to Iraq, with no indication that the two events—9/11 and the Iraq invasion—have been yoked together by unscrupulous politicians who don’t have a clue what lies in store for American soldiers. As in many jingoist war movies, the native population are portrayed as invaders of our sacred space instead of vice versa. Hall provides a supervillain, a crack shot named Mustafa (Sammy Sheik) who hunts the Legend, with Eastwood laying on the growly-doomy music whenever Mustafa appears. Their face-off gives American Sniper a conventional, suck-on-this climax.
In the latest Hunger Games movie, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s PR guy, Plutarch, views propaganda footage of Katniss Everdeen and says, “It’s a little on the nose, but of course so is war.” He could be talking about American Sniper. A fellow sniper tells Kyle as he takes aim at a potential insurgent, “If you’re wrong they send your ass to Leavenworth”—which would be news to a lot of soldiers who got it wrong without consequences. When Kyle goes back to Iraq, Taya (now with their son and daughter) says, “I don’t think we’ll be here when you get back.” And you just know, as soon as Kyle’s buddy asks him to be his best man, that in a few moments the guy will be history.
Eastwood does stage a scarily amorphous final battle in a sandstorm, and Cooper is very impressive. Best known for more congenial roles, he plays Kyle as grimly self-contained, both hyperalert and alienated. Kyle is put through the kind of training that would drive most men insane and, newly honed, gradually realizes that he’s now fit to do only a few things—protect other Americans, avoid being killed, and kill—and that he’ll never fully recover his old self. But Eastwood—who never directed a better scene than the one in Unforgiven when the protagonist shoots a basically harmless man and has to listen to his excruciating death throes—makes the moral stakes almost nonexistent. The people Kyle shoots always represent a “savage, despicable evil,” and the physical and mental cost to other Americans just comes with the territory. It’s a Republican platform movie.
Boy, these writers would have had one hell of a time during WW II. Well, probably not. They would have been drafted or put to work in a factory.
Oh, I just have no patience unless the writer gets to the point immediately. I’m sort of with other freepers who hate to drag themselves do the movies (you know, the cement bunker under the parking lot) these days. I’ll catch it on Netflix.
BTW, The Guardian is all over this movie which apparently is glorifying a racist, evil, homophobic murderous killer. And they are all celebrating the poor soul’s murder. Sick.
Taken?
This drivel begs the question: what is a Democrat platform movie?
Honor, duty, courage = Republican platform?
OORAH!
Somebody needs to slap the lisp right out of this twit, Edelstein.
Anything by Michael Moore.
-PJ
Somebody needs to send this guy a crying towel.
I doubt that the author dislikes propaganda as long as its propaganda for his views.
which would be news to a lot of soldiers who got it wrong without consequences
Really Edlestein? Numerous GI’s were prosecuted/persecuted for various wrongs.
Or did you forget that?
Odd that the author thinks only Republicans see savage, despicable and evil people as being savage, despicable and evil.
As opposed to the loving family man who would behead you for eating bacon?
” “If you’re wrong they send your ass to Leavenworth”—which would be news to a lot of soldiers who got it wrong without consequences.”
Mr. Edelstein...THANK YOU for your unwitting poke at President Obama’s drone war, and his killing of thousands of innocent bystanders with his missiles.
Will you be pushing to have Zero transfer from the White House to Fort Leavenworth? I’ll be glad to help him pack.
The left’s party line is that WWII was the last “good war” and that there will never be another good war. They will not allow any dissent from their script.
Yes, for once, they know how we feel when we have to watch their odious agenda insinuated into an otherwise good film. It’s like enjoying a good hamburger, then biting into that piece of gristle or vein which immediately causes loss of appetite.
.
Yes. Unreadable. Can we get a simple thumbs up or down on this flick please? Thank you.
Translation: Well, I suppose its a pretty good movie but it does not fit my liberal world view.
“But I’ve been arguing online with liberals since almost the turn of the century. I laugh at them a lot. They don’t think like we do.”
Leftist Ideology Deconstructed in 1,000 words:
https://www.facebook.com/wralford/posts/10152235002561933
“Morally, though, he has regressed...”
Well, Mr. Edelstein, one can only speak of “moral regression” if you have some objective standard of morality to judge him against, but you leftists reject objective morality.
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