American Sniper 2o14-15

American Sniper (2014)

 

. . . With a more than fifty percent rate of divorce in the United States today most people can relate what it was like to live through a divorce with their parents. Unfortunately, they can also relate to what it was like to feel like pawns in the war that was waged by at least one parent against the other . . . — Allan Schwartz, Ph.D.

 

American Sniper is a great movie if you’re a conservative; it’s a horrible movie if you are a liberal. Yeah, that’s right (or do I mean left?), the public has decided that the success or failure of the movie American Sniper is solely based on . . . the political point of view of the audience member watching the film, and not on the movie itself. American Sniper is the unfortunate kid caught in the middle of a bitter political war between Daddy Right and Mommy Left; they use their poor child as a weapon to beat the hell out of each other.

 

The truth of the matter is American Sniper is an okay war movie. Not the greatest war movie ever made . . . but it’s an okay movie. Its major flaw is it shows us the horrors of war but never really creates the experience for the audience. It’s like watching a news reel from WWII. Yes, we are told in pictures and words that the war is horrible . . . but we don’t really get the opportunity to experience what it might feel like to be in a war. There’s a host of films (Fury [2o14], The Hurt Locker [2oo8], Platoon [1986] to name a few) that depict war in a more personal, visceral way. American Sniper just feels too generic. Too many of the scenes feel like they were stolen from other war movies.

 

The only thing that half way works in this film is its exploration of PTSD. There are some pretty chilling scenes. One scene has Chris driving down the freeway and sees a car in his rearview mirror that resembles “the enemy’s” mode of transportation in Iraq. He spaces out for a minute and nearly causes a wreck. Another scene that works well is when his son’s playing with the dog and Chris beats the dog because he thinks it’s attacking his boy. Yeah, it’s pretty chilling stuff. But unfortunately, it’s not quite enough to redeem a movie that doesn’t really say anything new about war and its effect on the veterans and their family members who must deal with love ones suffering from PTSD.