Film Review: American Sniper (2014)

Is American Sniper as morally blind, jingoistic and lacking in political context as a host of commentators and critics have described it? Yes. Yes it is. Most of the critical flak has been aimed at director Clint Eastwood, but I'd say scriptwriter Jason Hall and producer/star Bradley Cooper deserve more of the blame.

Eastwood's direction here ranges from efficient to perfunctory to downright lazy, but I'm calling out Hall and Cooper for a jaw-droppingly bad script that feels as though it was crafted by a committee comprised of PR people for the NRA and the Tea Party. The script does such a thorough job of ducking the hard and nasty truths about Chris Kyle and the war in Iraq that it should qualify as a fantasy film. Kyle's ghostwritten autobiography and subsequent revelations about his post-war life made it clear that he was a racist, a sociopath, and a congenital liar who fantasized about killing civilians. These qualities probably helped make him grade A material for the Navy SEALS, but why would a scriptwriter and producer go so far out of their way to whitewash a character who was, to put it mildly, halfway to being a serial killer? The script also cuts and pastes the historical record in order to suggest that Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks. I'd say this kind of revisionism, and the film's fawning celebration of good ole boy machismo, is a calculated and cynical strategy to appeal to a specific and considerable American demographic; namely the kind of people who flesh out the ranks of the Tea Party; holiday in Branson, MO; fill the stands at NASCAR races; attend gun shows on Saturdays and pack the pews of megachurches on Sundays. This is the audience this film is tailor-made for. American Sniper glorifies, even beatifies, the values and myths they hold dear and does it with a rigorous disregard for the thorny inconveniences of irony, historical accuracy, psychological insight, and the moral and political consequences of military actions.

American Sniper also continues a tradition of  mainstream Hollywood films portraying wars purely in terms of their effect on American soldiers and civilians. Vietnam films, even politically liberal ones such as Coming Home, had nothing to say about the two million Vietnamese killed in the war. The Hurt Locker, another film about the Iraq war, is very similar in tone and subject matter to American Sniper and also shares its lack of interest in the war's impact on Iraqis. If your only knowledge of Iraq came from those two films you'd be left with the idea that Iraq was entirely filled with terrorists and their civilian supporters. The combination of two wars and brutal economic sanctions between those wars have led to the deaths, by some estimates, of a million Iraqis and the displacement of millions more. According to Hollywood's moral accounting, none of that counts for anything compared to the temporary psychological stresses suffered by one soldier, Chris Kyle, and his wife.

Looked at purely from a cinematic perspective, Eastwood's direction is robotic. The plentiful action sequences are visually dull and lack tension, the boot camp section is an afterthought, and the scenes that show Kyle suffering from PTSD make it look like it's a condition akin to having a few too many coffees. I think at some point in pre-production everyone decided this best way to approach this film was to be non-judgmental and let the facts (according to Chris Kyle) speak for themselves. That's translated into a dull, witless, nasty film that might have worked better if it had paraphrased the title of an earlier, better Eastwood film: how does White Sniper, Black Heart sound?

Film Review: American Hustle (2013)

That American Hustle is being showered with accolades I can only attribute to the fact that the film leaves critics with a stark choice: call it the thunderingly dull turkey that it is, or knuckle under to the film's overblown, badly-written characters and its witless fascination with Seventies decor and fashion. Most critics have opted to go with the herd and applaud the film, possibly leery that they might be accused of not being able to appreciate director David O. Russell's ironic look at the con men and women who are often at the heart of the American Dream.

It's difficult to pick out the worst aspect of this film, but I think I'll put my money on the characters. The five main characters are resolutely dull, witless and shallow. The same could be said about a lot of the characters in Boogie Nights, another Seventies-themed film, but the huge difference is that the latter film actually likes and respects its characters, and works to make us feel the same way. Russell has no respect for his characters. He's laughing at them and wants us join in on the laughter by making them look and sound as ridiculous as possible. Bad hair! Wide lapels! Disco! Oh, the horror and hilarity! Every character, with the possible exception of Jeremy Renner's, is in the film to be mocked. Their ambitions, their beliefs, their lifestyles, everything about them is either sneered at or openly ridiculed. And yet this isn't a comedy. I saw it in a crowded cinema and you could have heard a pin drop throughout; no laughs, no giggles, maybe a few chuckles here and there. You really have to wonder what Russell's purpose was in making this film because its entertainment value is zero.

The plot is a shambolic retelling of the Abscam scandal, but most of the script is taken up with the dreary personal relationships and romantic entanglements of the main characters. This is where the acting might have saved the film, but, alas, not this time. There's some seriously bad acting going on here. Bradley Cooper and Amy Adams seem to think they're appearing in a telenovela, and Christian Bale casts a soporific pall over the film with his thick, chewy Bronx accent and sluggish...line...readings. Jennifer Lawrence emerges with her honour intact despite being lumbered with some of the worst dialogue, and Robert De Niro appears briefly to show everyone what a real pro can do. Unfortunately for Russell, De Niro's presence only reminds us that American Hustle is basically a ripoff of Goodfellas. In fact, if I was Martin Scorsese I'd be suing for plagiarism. Or maybe not. I wouldn't want people thinking that anything this bad could have been inspired by my film.