Competent though wretched fare pandering to American Exceptionalism (3/10)
Reviewed by Brian R. Wright
As with most of Clint Eastwood’s cinematic efforts, American Sniper is good moviemaking; he gives you solid plot and engaging action. Also, in this case, Bradley Cooper turns in an excellent, believable performance as the Navy S.E.A.L. super sniper Chris Kyle.
Along with many in the peace and anti-imperialist community, I balked at watching this film. Even though the work is first rate and you are drawn into caring for the principal characters—gotta keep your war buddies from being killed and gotta handle the psychological problems of adjusting to nonwar life— the overwhelming question sweeps over you like a tsunami: “What in the hell are we doing here?!” Why are groups of brawny American men with guns and grenades going door to door in neighborhoods that US jets and artillery have bombed into pieces… and rousting scrawny remnants of once-thriving civilians, that OUR freedom forces have brutalized beyond recognition, clinging to life by a thread?
The magnitude of American wrongdoing in Iraq (and now all the other countries as part of the Greater Israel Project) is so depressing as to be an indictment of any enterprise associated with it, including, nay especially, Hollywood apologia. The fact that that the predominant USA! USA! booboosie masses are inflated by such barbarism directed against ‘the helpless other’ only serves to make American Sniper even more disgusting to anyone with the moral sensitivity or intelligence above a toilet seat.
One can probably make a case for this movie being simply a naturalistic or realistic depiction of how things are, not romanticizing or embellishing, but giving a rationale for the motives such premier warriors as Kyle have for attaching themselves to so objectively, blatantly evil a cause. But that leaves out the obvious question: How is it that Chris Kyle is so abysmally a) stupid, or b) malevolent, to blindly follow a government that a child can see as monstrously, terminally destructive of humanity. The naive, unthinking hero hiring himself out to the Mob. Why would anyone want to make a movie about such a person?
It’s over. Pull the plug. The US government at its highest levels is global state terror personified. It is NOT worth defending, it needs to be replaced from top to bottom… using people’s grand juries, perhaps in conjunction with a citizens’ truth commission. The leaders, with few exceptions, “on both sides of the aisle” belong in prison. Followers, like Chris Kyle, need to learn how to think for themselves. [And maybe that was going to happen with him; it has happened for notable ex-Marines and soldiers sent into the killing fields, such as Adam Kokesh, who has become a peace and liberty activist extraordinaire.]
As an aside, two war movies re: Iraq and Afghanistan worth seeing and applauding are:
- The Green Zone: http://brianrwright.com/CoffeeCoasterBlog/?p=4286
- The Pat Tillman Story: http://brianrwright.com/CoffeeCoasterBlog/?p=2159
Sorry, Clint, thumbs way down on this one. Nothing and no one to care about. Except those whom the HERO’s forces are displacing, jailing, torturing, and killing.
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