American Sniper

UK Release Date. 16 January 2015
Certification. 15
Running Time. 2 hours 13 mins
Director. Clint Eastwood
Cast. Bradley Cooper, Luke Grimes, Sienna Miller.
Rating. 74%

Review.

Clint Eastwood's American Sniper is a harrowing account of the Iraq War observed through the rifle sights of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, whose four tours of duty cemented his standing as the deadliest marksman in US military history. Kyle is credited with up to 160 confirmed kills, including in 2008, when he is reputed to have executed an impossible shot from more 2,000 yards.

The film's dramatic opening sees Chris Kyle on a rooftop as an Iraqi woman and child emerge from an adjacent derelict building in front of an advancing column of US Marines. The woman in the cross-hairs produces a grenade from beneath her chador and hands it to the child. Kyle's commanding officer on the radio informs him that he'll have to make the call himself, and the audience holds it breath - for a half-hour of expository flashbacks - to find out if Kyle takes the shot. This sobering set piece defines the film.

As a director, Clint Eastwood is no stranger to combat films; from Heartbreak Ridge to the polar viewpoints of The Battle Of Iwo Jima depicted in Flags Of Our Fathers and Letters Of Iwo Jima. However, Eastwood is not a director with an overtly political point to view to share. He avoids wading into the ideological murk of the merits of the conflict and steadfastly adheres to Chris Kyle's point of view. Eastwood handles a range of combat set pieces, including those in which Kyle is compelled to shoot women and children, without fuss. For much of the film, the camera maintains a perfunctory and purposeful, ground-level position that yields an almost purely experiential view of the conflict in which none of the other soldiers become more than two-dimensional characters.

In contrast, a compelling performance from a bulked-up Bradley Cooper brings Chris Kyle to life. Full of spirit and homely charm early on, there is an undoubted edge to the character and Kyle's absence of self-doubt is never far from the surface, even at moments when it seems like it's misplaced. Thereafter, he slips into a sort of private agony that only those who have served their country can share. When Kyle is home on leave, he's painfully distant, reluctant to talk about his experience and barely able to function. This intimate character study offers fairly blunt insights into the physical and psychological toll exacted on troops on the front lines, and much hinges on Cooper's restrained yet deeply expressive performance, allowing many of the unspoken implications to be read plainly on the character's increasingly war-ravaged face.

What initially appears as another straightforward film about combat gradually develops into something more complex and ruminative. Eastwood deftly teases out any number of logistical and ethical complications - Kyle's frustration at always having to engage from a distance rather than on the ground with his comrades, as. well as the near-impossibility of figuring out whom to trust in an environment where everyone is presumed hostile.

In its revelation of character through action and its concern with procedure rather than politics, Eastwood's film shares similar themes with The Hurt Locker. And whilst American Sniper is perhaps more prosaic than Kathryn Bigelow's film, it nevertheless emerges as one of the few dramatic treatments of the US's involvement in the Iraq conflict that can stand in its company.