American Sniper

American Sniper
R
Running time: 2 hours 13 minutes
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, Max Charles, Luke Grimes, Kyle Gallner, Sam Jaeger, Jake McDorman, Cory Hardrict, Navid Negahban, Eric Close, Eric Ladin, Joel Lambert, Rey Gallegos, Kevin Lacz, Brian Hallisay, Jonathan Groff, Ben Reed, Elise Robertson, Keir O'Donnell, Marnette Patterson, Jason Hall, Leonard Roberts, Sugar Shane.

Synopsis
U.S. Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle is sent to Iraq with only one mission: to protect his brothers-in-arms. His pinpoint accuracy saves countless lives on the battlefield and, as stories of his courageous exploits spread, he earns the nickname "Legend." However, his reputation is also growing behind enemy lines, putting a price on his head and making him a prime target of insurgents. Despite the danger, as well as the toll on his family at home, Chris serves through four harrowing tours of duty in Iraq, becoming emblematic of the SEAL creed to "leave no man behind." But upon returning home, Chris finds that it is the war he can't leave behind.

Review
Based on the autobiography of the most lethal sniper in American military history, Clint Eastwood’s ‘American Sniper’ chronicles the ups-and-downs and personal conflicts of Texan sniper legend Chris Kyle. Heavilly dubbed as this year’s Hurt Locker, here we see a buffed-up Bradley Cooper delivering one of his best roles yet as the eponymous protagonist. Although the late Kyle has been celebrated as a respectable national hero, the film has managed to ignore or avoid a few darker personas bound to the legend himself, thus raising controversial uproars regarding his questionable on-screen portrayal. Story-wise, Cooper’s exceptionally well-acted part has breathed a damaging sense of psychological breakdown to Kyle’s personal lives, while Sienna Miller’s presence brings back the grounded humanity (or is it sanity?) and ordinariness to Kyle’s traumatically troublesome adjustment to civilization. With so much going on at the Iraq warzone, the line between heroism and patriotism is blurred by moral ambiguity and call-of-duty-or-conscience judgement, taking such concepts to places of unsettled effects. Moreover, the firefights are raw and gritty. Eastwood’s direction is rapid-paced, the humor is no where to be seen and is as dry as the battle wasteland the Navy troops fought in, and serves as a compendiously condensed biopic of of the most intriguing American figures.

Rating
4/5 Stars