American Sniper reviews

ITALIANO
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Re: American Sniper reviews

Post by ITALIANO »

Okri wrote:
ITALIANO wrote:I really dont want to see this one. And it may be the first time in decades that I won't see a movie nominated for important Oscars. But then why should I see a movie which glorifies an American who kills people who are defending their country, which Americans invaded without a reason? What's the logic in all this? And why can't Americans - especially after years - see how absurd all this is? Are they more stupid than the Europeans? Of course not. No, really, this film may even be a masterpiece - even Leni Riefenstahl's pro-Nazi movies are - but it's not for Italiano.
Italiano, you saw The Judge and I'm skipping it. I saw American Sniper, so you can skip it.

It's not a masterpiece. I think it might be worse than you imagine.
Right... And especially in this period, after what has recently happened in Paris... I'm just not in the mood.
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Re: American Sniper reviews

Post by Okri »

ITALIANO wrote:I really dont want to see this one. And it may be the first time in decades that I won't see a movie nominated for important Oscars. But then why should I see a movie which glorifies an American who kills people who are defending their country, which Americans invaded without a reason? What's the logic in all this? And why can't Americans - especially after years - see how absurd all this is? Are they more stupid than the Europeans? Of course not. No, really, this film may even be a masterpiece - even Leni Riefenstahl's pro-Nazi movies are - but it's not for Italiano.
Italiano, you saw The Judge and I'm skipping it. I saw American Sniper, so you can skip it.

It's not a masterpiece. I think it might be worse than you imagine.
ITALIANO
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Re: American Sniper reviews

Post by ITALIANO »

I really dont want to see this one. And it may be the first time in decades that I won't see a movie nominated for important Oscars. But then why should I see a movie which glorifies an American who kills people who are defending their country, which Americans invaded without a reason? What's the logic in all this? And why can't Americans - especially after years - see how absurd all this is? Are they more stupid than the Europeans? Of course not. No, really, this film may even be a masterpiece - even Leni Riefenstahl's pro-Nazi movies are - but it's not for Italiano.
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Re: American Sniper reviews

Post by Precious Doll »

The best quick review I have seen about this film is by a poster on MUBI:

"Move along, nothing to see here"
"I want cement covering every blade of grass in this nation! Don't we taxpayers have a voice anymore?" Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole) in John Waters' Desperate Living (1977)
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Re: American Sniper reviews

Post by Greg »

Here's an interesting article about American Sniper's Chris Kyle.

"5 Things American Sniper’s Chris Kyle Allegedly Lied About"

http://www.vulture.com/2015/01/real-ame ... -lies.html

The one that stood out for me was Kyle claiming that ". . . he traveled to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and. . . shot 'dozens of armed residents who were contributing to the chaos.' "
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Re: American Sniper reviews

Post by Uri »

Spoilers ahead! Spoiler ah… Never mind.

Had Chris Kyle not been murdered, the screenwriters here should have come up with this deus ex machina style solution. It gave Eastwood the perfect coda for his film, and exactly as it’s done – it accentuate the messiah theme that runs through the depiction of Chris (get it? – CHRIS) as a biblical savior, a David with a modern sling, taken from being a shepherd/cowboy to kill the Goliaths. So, eventually, he must die a seemingly motive free death, after he achieved an almost nirvana like inner peace, because that what messiahs do – they die for our sins, don’t they?

(Ok, he died for your sins – I have plenty of other people dying for mine).
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Re: American Sniper reviews

Post by Big Magilla »

The anticipated effects of the film on Kyle's killer's trial:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-es ... Stories%29
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Re: American Sniper reviews

Post by dws1982 »

BIG SPOILER for anyone who hasn't seen Sniper, or who doesn't know the true-life story.


You've been warned.

The Original BJ wrote:I'm coming up with a new rule -- in any movie based on a true story, when something HUGELY significant happens at the end of that story, I will not allow said event to be reduced to a title card slapped up on screen before the end credits. And this approach bothered me even more here than it did with The Imitation Game, partly because I actually didn't know Chris Kyle's fate before I saw the movie, but also because the conclusion left me with all sorts of questions I couldn't believe the movie didn't answer. Who was this guy in the last scene? What exactly happened? What are the filmmakers' takes on any of this?
I get this, but I think they handled it that way because the case against the Marine who killed Chris Kyle (and another man who was with them that day) is still pending; there's been no plea or trial yet. I suspect that Eastwood & co. were encouraged not to "comment" on it.

Need to see this again before I go into detail on my thoughts. Firmly in the thumbs-up column, though. In terms of Oscars, I'm pretty sure this is our winner for Sound Editing, and wouldn't be at all surprised to see it pull in Editing and Sound Mixing as well.
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Re: American Sniper reviews

Post by Sabin »

Thoughts, and there's not many of them:
-- Bradley Cooper is quickly becoming of my favorite working actors. He finds these actively unsympathetic characters and makes them wholly charming.
-- I don't know anything about Chris Kyle. It's become clear to me as of recent that Chris Kyle is a giant asshole. Because I know nothing about Chris Kyle nor have I ever cared to learn, it's hard for me to call bullshit on whether or not it's an accurate representation. For me, he works as a composite for those who gave their lives to serve their country in a misguided war.
-- Which means two things don't work: 1) the most dangerous sniper in the world stuff, because the film has zero interest in what that means or takes beyond pop psychology. By which I mean, the single most "interesting" (I guess) thing about this guy (his insane ability to kill from long distance) is not something Eastwood and Cooper are interested in doing. If anything, they want to quash expectations by making him into a truly nice person whose desire to do right by his country is the real story. It's not a great real story and it doesn't have an ending. He just finds a different way to give back to his country and it ends up killing him. Efforts to savior-complex this guy are problematic. Which leads us to...
-- And 2) that awful credits sequence.
-- Strong filmmaking, a very brisk 2+ hours. Fairly gripping at times. It's probably Eastwood's best film since Letters from Iwo Jima, but I found J. Edgar more interesting if only because to be honest I didn't know much about that history going in and that world is a thousand times more interesting than this one. But strong filmmaking and again: in Cooper, Eastwood finds a performer who helps his vision hit those American mythic notes more than it should. It really does feel like an entire film devoted to Barry Peppar in Saving Private Ryan. For better or worse. I personally mean that as a compliment.
-- uh....really not sure about its prospects. The things I don't like about it might end up helping it with Academy voters. Best Film Editing, Sound Mixing, and Sound Effects are likely and reasonably deserves. Screenplay is not but that seems like a done deal. Picture could happen.
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Re: American Sniper reviews

Post by The Original BJ »

I'm coming up with a new rule -- in any movie based on a true story, when something HUGELY significant happens at the end of that story, I will not allow said event to be reduced to a title card slapped up on screen before the end credits. And this approach bothered me even more here than it did with The Imitation Game, partly because I actually didn't know Chris Kyle's fate before I saw the movie, but also because the conclusion left me with all sorts of questions I couldn't believe the movie didn't answer. Who was this guy in the last scene? What exactly happened? What are the filmmakers' takes on any of this? Even though I thought the ending in Foxcatcher was problematic, I almost want to give a belated tip of the hat to the fact that it actually occurred on-screen, rather than as a postscripted afterthought to the movie.

Putting aside the fact that this movie concluded in a manner that actively annoyed me, I find that I don't have a ton to say about American Sniper. I think it's all right. It's well-made, and decently engaging, probably a bit more than that in some of the Iraq war scenes, which are very effectively staged and mounted. I don't think any of these sequences reach the breathtaking wow of either of Kathryn Bigelow's recent efforts, but there's good, sturdy craft involved.

But I think the movie comes up short in the insight department -- I've seen numerous Iraq war movies before, and much of this portion of the movie felt like a more generic version of The Hurt Locker or Zero Dark Thirty. And the homefront scenes succeeded even less for me in this area -- Chris Kyle returns home with some severe PTSD, but I feel like I've seen PTSD be depicted on-screen before, and it didn't seem to me like American Sniper had any fresh take on the subject. I don't think the movie is BAD (though there are a couple scenes that are sort of clunkily handled, especially the reaction to 9/11 on the tv), but neither did I really understand why this was a story that needed to be told, aside from its protagonist's military record (and sad fate).

Bradley Cooper is a pretty solid center to the movie -- I especially liked how natural his accent felt -- and the role allows the actor to show a far more raw, dramatic side of his abilities than we've really seen before. I don't know that the part has enough of a hook for an Oscar nomination, though, and in a field this crowded, I'm not surprised he's struggled to get attention despite perfectly respectable work.

I could see it getting the Lone Survivor sound nominations, and maybe an Adapted Screenplay nod in such a thin year, but I feel like Picture/Director spots would require a lot more enthusiasm than I see this one getting.
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Re: American Sniper reviews

Post by Sabin »

My friend A.A. Dowd, the head film critic at The AV Club, just saw American Sniper and texted me:

"American Sniper is pretty good."
"Clint's clean direction works fantastically for the war scenes. Dramatically and psychologically, it's very Hurt Locker simple but still affecting."
"Cooper is pretty excellent. He internalizes everything. The home front scenes are quite good, suggesting his constant distraction and unease without getting fussy about it."
"It's long but moves quick, it's ultimately pretty efficient."
"I like it. It's not great, but it's sturdy, engaging work."
"[off Oscar potential question] Not sure. It could be seen as old hat, after Hurt Locker. Cooper isn't esepcially showy, so he's no sure thing to even get a nod."

It's his favorite Clint Eastwood film since Letters from Iwo Jima. He liked J. Edgar and Changeling for basically the same reasons I did. The stories are compelling. The films are flawed but certainly compelling. He found Flags of Our Fathers, Hereafter, Jersey Boys, Invictus, Mystic River, and Gran Torino pretty risible, but Million Dollar Baby was one of his favorites of the decade. But more or less he gave up on Clint Eastwood doing anything good again a while ago.
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American Sniper reviews

Post by Mister Tee »

Had it not come on the same night as Selma, this might be the big story -- at least for Cooper.

Variety
Justin Chang
Chief Film Critic @JustinCChang

A skillful, straightforward combat picture gradually develops into something more complex and ruminative in Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper,” an account of the Iraq War as observed through the rifle sights of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, whose four tours of duty cemented his standing as the deadliest marksman in U.S. military history. Hard-wiring the viewer into Kyle’s battle-scarred psyche thanks to an excellent performance from a bulked-up Bradley Cooper, this harrowing and intimate character study offers fairly blunt insights into the physical and psychological toll exacted on the front lines, yet strikes even its familiar notes with a sobering clarity that finds the 84-year-old filmmaker in very fine form. Depressingly relevant in the wake of recent headlines, Warners’ Dec. 25 release should drum up enough grown-up audience interest to work as a serious-minded alternative to more typical holiday fare, and looks to extend its critical and commercial reach well into next year.

Although Steven Spielberg was set to direct before exiting the project last summer (just a few months after Kyle’s death in Texas at the age of 38), “American Sniper” turns out to be very much in Eastwood’s wheelhouse, emerging as arguably the director’s strongest, most sustained effort in the eight years since his WWII double-header of “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters From Iwo Jima.” As was clear in those films and this one, few directors share Eastwood’s confidence with large-scale action, much less his inclination to investigate the brutality of what he shows us — to acknowledge both the pointlessness and the necessity of violence while searching for more honest, ambiguous definitions of heroism than those to which we’re accustomed. In these respects and more, Kyle — who earned the nickname “Legend” from his fellow troops, achieved a staggering record of 160 confirmed kills, and became one of the most coveted targets of the Iraqi insurgency — makes for a uniquely fascinating and ultimately tragic case study.

We first meet Kyle (Cooper) as he’s hunched over a rooftop overlooking a blown-out structure in Fallujah, Iraq, taking deadly aim at a local woman and her young son walking some distance away; only Kyle’s specific vantage allows him to see that they’re preparing to lob a grenade at nearby Marines. The fraught situation and its queasy-making stakes thus introduced, the film abruptly flashes back some 30-odd years to Kyle’s Texas childhood, establishing him as a skilled shooter at a young age (played by Cole Konis) as well as a brave protector to his younger brother, Jeff (Luke Sunshine). After a brief rodeo career, Cooper’s Kyle joins the ranks of the Navy SEALs, whose brutal training regimen — including the muddy beachfront endurance tests of the dreaded Hell Week — is depicted more extensively here than they were in last year’s military-memoir adaptation “Lone Survivor.”

As scripted by Jason Hall (paring down Kyle’s 2012 autobiography, written with Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice), these flashbacks form the film’s most conventional stretch, including a tartly humorous scene at a bar where Kyle charms his way past the defenses of the beautiful Taya (Sienna Miller), despite her early claim that she’d never date one of those “arrogant, self-centered pricks” who call themselves SEALs. Yet Kyle belies that description, revealing himself as a God-fearing, red-blooded American galvanized into fighting, as so many were, by the shock of 9/11 and his determination to avenge his country. Indeed, the ink is barely dry on his and Taya’s marriage license when Kyle gets shipped off to Fallujah, where he and his comrades are well served by his exceptional abilities as a sniper.

It’s here that the story catches up with that tense mother-and-child setup, this time not sparing us the gruesome, inevitable aftermath. Describing his actions to a fellow soldier, Kyle breathes, “That was evil like I had never seen before” — a statement that lingers meaningfully as we watch him racking up kill after kill, efficiently dispatching the male Iraqi insurgents he spies surreptitiously arming themselves in a back alley, or driving a car bomb in the direction of American soldiers. In each of these life-or-death scenarios, Kyle must use what little time he has to swiftly assess whether his targets indeed pose an immediately actionable threat, lest he face recriminations from lawyers, liberals and other members of the Blame America First crowd (a point the book drives home far more vehemently than the film).

Not surprisingly, Eastwood avoids wading into the ideological murk of the situation and sticks tightly to Kyle’s p.o.v., yielding an almost purely experiential view of the conflict in which none of the other soldiers becomes more than a two-dimensional sketch, dates and locations are rarely identified, and any larger geopolitical context has been deliberately elided. (Some details have clearly been fudged; Kyle says he’s 30 when he enlists, but he was actually in his mid-20s.) Yet the achievement of “American Sniper” is the way it subtly undermines and expands its protagonist’s initially gung-ho worldview, as 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; the sometimes difficult collaboration between the SEALs and the less well-trained Marines, especially when they begin the dangerous task of clearing out Iraqi houses; and above all, the near-impossibility of figuring out whom to trust in an environment where everyone is presumed hostile.

This becomes especially crucial when Kyle and company receive orders to take down the Al Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his vicious second-in-command, the Butcher (Mido Hamada), named in part for his imaginative use of power drills. The hunt for the Butcher — and, eventually, a Syrian-born sniper named Mustafa (Sammy Sheik), whose lethal precision rivals Kyle’s own — leads the troops into a series of breathless skirmishes, from a horrific Al Qaeda attack on the family of an Iraqi sheikh (Navid Negahban) to a nighttime ambush that develops as a result of Kyle’s extraordinary perceptiveness in a seemingly benign situation. Working as usual with d.p. Tom Stern and editors Joel Cox and Gary D. Roach, Eastwood handles these ambitious setpieces with an unfussy professionalism worthy of his subject, the camera maintaining a gritty, ground-level feel (with the exception of a few crane shots demanded by the complex staging of the film’s climactic shootout) while switching deftly among a range of perspectives that nonetheless maintain a strong continuity of action.

Less adroitly handled are the regular cutaways to Taya and their two children back in Texas, providing necessary but over-emphatic reminders that Kyle’s loved ones are paying dearly for his military service. Taya seems to have a bad habit of catching her husband on the phone at those unfortunate moments when mortar and shrapnel are exploding around him (which is understandably often). When he’s home on leave, he’s painfully distant, reluctant to talk about his experiences and barely able to function, which is Taya’s cue to spout some gratingly obvious dialogue of the “Even when you’re here, you’re not here” variety. What works in these scenes, however, is the disquieting sense that Kyle’s normal life has shifted into the war zone, and that his time with his family is passing him by in fast, jarring blips; we see his kids at only brief intervals here, and the rate at which they grow up must be as startling for him as it is for us.

In its revelation of character through action, its concern with procedure rather than politics, and its focus on an exceptionally gifted U.S. soldier struggling to make sense of his small yet essential place in a war he only partly understands, Eastwood’s picture can’t help but recall “The Hurt Locker,” and if it’s ultimately a more earnest and prosaic, less formally daring affair than Kathryn Bigelow’s film, it nevertheless emerges as one of the few dramatic treatments of the U.S.-Iraq conflict that can stand in its company. And just as “The Hurt Locker” found revelatory depths in Jeremy Renner, so “American Sniper” hinges on Cooper’s restrained yet deeply expressive lead performance, allowing many of the drama’s unspoken implications to be read plainly in the actor’s increasingly war-ravaged face.

Cooper, who packed on 40 pounds for the role, is superb here; full of spirit and down-home charm early on, he seems to slip thereafter into a sort of private agony that only those who have truly served their country can know. (A late sequence shot in an impenetrable sandstorm provides the most literal possible metaphor for his own personal fog of war.) Perhaps the film’s most humanizing touch is its willingness to show Kyle not just reacting but thinking, attempting to grasp ideas that have thus far eluded him, whether he’s spending time with veterans who have lost limbs and worse on the battlefield; coming to grips with the difference between him and his reluctant-Marine brother (Keir O’Donnell); or shrugging awkwardly when someone calls him a “hero,” as if the word were a particularly ill-fitting sweater.

While the circumstances of Kyle’s death add a note of tragic urgency to the film’s matter-of-fact examination of post-traumatic stress disorder, the moment itself is left offscreen, a decision that feels consistent with the scrupulous restraint that characterizes the production as a whole. The visual and editorial choices discreetly reinforce the clash between the hell of modern warfare (the color all but drained away from Stern’s images) and the purgatory of middle-class American life, accentuated by a sound mix that allows us to register the hard pop of every gunshot. While Eastwood’s musical compositions have sometimes been hit-or-miss, he’s never written a subtler score than the one here, providing faint, almost imperceptible accompaniment; in a film that encourages us to reflect as well as feel, it’s a choice that speaks volumes.

Hollywood Reporter
by Todd McCarthy

The Bottom Line
Bradley Cooper muscles up to carry Clint Eastwood's rugged look at an Iraq War legend.

A taut, vivid and sad account of the brief life of the most accomplished marksman in American military annals, American Sniper feels very much like a companion piece — in subject, theme and quality — to The Hurt Locker. Starring a beefed-up and thoroughly Texanized Bradley Cooper as we've never seen him before, Clint Eastwood's second film of 2014 is his best in a number of years, as it infuses an ostensibly gung-ho and patriotic story with an underlying pain and melancholy of a sort that echoes the director's other works about the wages of violence. Unlike The Hurt Locker, however, this Warner Bros. Christmas release should enjoy a muscular box-office career based on the extraordinary popularity of its source book by the late Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, Cooper's star status and its “God, country, family” aspects that will draw that part of the public that doesn't often go to the movies.

The gun — along with its significance to the United States, past and present — has been Eastwood's most frequent co-star since the beginning of his career and has played a major role in most of his best films, from the Westerns and the Dirty Harrys to the war dramas. As the title suggests, a gun — or, more precisely, an extremely high-powered rifle — shares the screen with Cooper here, although it is not at all fetishized in the manner that weapons are in the book.

Initiated by screenwriter Jason Hall in conjunction with Kyle while the latter was still alive and before the publication of the book Kyle wrote with Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice, the film is surprisingly different from the book in its focus and feel. The tome takes a sort of checklist approach to Kyle's life, especially his military career, and rarely dramatizes events in a visceral or exciting way. By contrast, the script tends to emphasize major hazardous episodes in each of the soldier's four tours of duty, which are staged with the requisite intensity and are interrupted by brief respites that illustrate Kyle's increasingly detached relationship with his wife and family.

There's real snap to the expository first 20 minutes that establishes Kyle's character as the son of a religious father who stressed the ever-threatening presence of evil, the virtues of aggression and fighting, and the supremacy of the hunt. The opening stretch also features a highlight reel of brutal Navy SEAL training (including the unadvertised activity of having darts thrown into one's naked back while drunk) and creates a warm impression of Kyle's boozy, teasing courtship with barroom pickup Taya (Sienna Miller).

Then it's Wham!, to Fallujah, where Kyle's mettle as a sniper is severely tested by his first challenge: taking out what appears to be a mother and son intent on blowing up a group of U.S. soldiers with a large grenade. So unerring is Kyle's aim and ability to spot ripe candidates for killing that he very quickly becomes commonly referred to as “The Legend.” When possible targets become scarce, Kyle joins the men assigned to the arduous task of clearing houses door-to-door in hopes of finding a despicable character called “The Butcher,” who, when seen in action, fully lives up to his nickname.

The urban environment in which much of the Iraq War was fought is evoked here with a pungent sense of the dust, smoke, filth and detritus of combat, along with the confusion and uncertainty that must have prevailed much of the time (exteriors were shot in Rabat, Morocco, as well as on an extensive town set). As shown here, there was no telling who or what might be behind any door, perched on any roof or behind the wheel of any vehicle. Kyle's first order of business as a sniper is to make the all-important decision of whether a potential target is a combatant or a civilian; he can be hauled off to face charges if he's wrong. But once he gets them in his sights, he, with almost unerring accuracy, pops them with one shot.

A bit disappointingly, there's no real discussion of what distinguishes Kyle from the rest, nor is the man's love for what he does emphasized to the extent that it is in the book. The politics of the war are completely off the table here, but there's never any question that Kyle and his relatively undifferentiated buddies are in Iraq on a mission they believe in because, as our sniper puts it, “There's evil here.”

After a quick visit to San Diego on the occasion of the birth of his and Taya's first child, Kyle's second tour is entirely devoted to the elimination of The Butcher. Brief but grisly torture marks this rough interlude, which numbs Kyle perhaps more than he realizes.

When he next returns home, Taya discharges a full round of on-the-nose complaints, such as “Even when you're here, you're not here” and “If you think this war isn't changing you, you're wrong.” While it at first appears that the home front difficulties between Kyle and Taya will receive something close to equal weight with the combat, they progressively become shortchanged to the point that Kyle's visits seem like obligatory, increasingly tense pit stops rather than occasions to really explore the extent of the soldier's psycho-emotional rearrangement and his wife's burden.

Feeling the compulsion to return, Kyle has a rougher time of it on his third and fourth tours of duty. The fighting has gotten nastier, Sadr City is a non-negotiable nightmare and the enemy now has a sniper nearly as talented as Kyle. Here, too, the film could have used a bit more detail, just a short scene or two in which the Legend indulges in a little shop talk, instructs a newcomer, explains how he does it.

After an intense final gun battle descends into absolute chaos when enveloped by a massive dust storm (which visually summons up memories of the tsunami scene in Eastwood's 2010 feature Hereafter), Kyle announces that he's had enough. When all is said and done, he has spent about a thousand days in Iraq and recorded more than 160 official kills, although the actual figure was probably significantly higher.

Eastwood handles the tragic ending with a tact underlined with irony, creepiness and a sense of loss that echoes any number of his previous films. He might have gone deeper into the ways the war infected his subject and the struggles he faced after his final homecoming, but whatever the script ignores Cooper goes a long way toward filling in. His physical transformation — bull neck, puffier face, cowboy gait, thick Texas country accent — is one thing. And his skill with jokey banter serves him well in his early scenes with Miller and some of the guys. But nothing the actor has done before suggests the dramatic assuredness he brings to his way of detailing Kyle's self-control, confidence, coolness, genuine concern for his comrades-in-arms, compulsion to serve his country and ultimate realization that enough is enough, even of the thing he loves most, which is war.

Dark-haired and looking markedly different than in most of her previous films, Miller is best in the early stretch and seems a bit cheated by the one-dimensionality of her brief later scenes. Physically, the film is first-rate. Brighter than most of Eastwood's films, it benefits from mobile and intently focused cinematography by Tom Stern, highly realistic production design by James J. Murakami and Charisse Cardenas, propulsive editing from Joel Cox and Gary D. Roach, and a very spare music track; the sound of bullets and explosions says it all here.
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