Review of American Sniper

[Francisco Ferrer]

If this country is ever again occupied by a foreign army, may there be men, women and, yes, even children brave enough to risk their lives to drive the invader from these shores.

[Brant Gaede]

The foreign army is Federal government bureaucrats. No one else is coming and no one else is here. As for the movie, I doubt I'll ever see it. Flying killer drones is the logical extension of sniping. I'm only up to it in extremis. I'm not a good enough shot for the job anyway. (With new technology, though, snipers won't have to have uber skills.) For me it would be like torturing someone. Can't do it like it was a job ("Next!"), only in extremis, when I don't care what's left of me when I'm done. That's the psychological commitment of combat and one year of Vietnam was enough for me--a war that wasn't good enough for its carnage. (It was a lot better than the oil wars, however, with the possible exception of The Gulf War. [This is not a reference to the amount of destruction but to the relative morality as such. 3-4 million or more died--were killed--if you count the Cambodian spillover. That's another significant moral factor, but I simply parsed it out for clarity.])

--Brant

[Darrell Hougen]

First, I'll say that I saw the movie and I liked it.

The story is about the true life adventures of Chris Kyle, one of the most successful U.S. snipers of all time. It starts with his early life as a cowboy and follows him as he decides to serve his country after he sees reports of the terrorist attack on the U.S. embassy in Tansania. By the time of the World Trade Center attack, he was already a Navy Seal. The movie skips the war in Afghanistan and jumps to his first of four deployments to Iraq which included places like Fallujah and Sadr City.

Chris Kyle is not exactly Rand's style of hero. Her ideal man, John Galt, is much more intellectual and philosophical than Kyle, but in many respects, Kyle is the all American hero. On some level, he was just an average guy --- modest, unassuming, self-assured. On another level, he was as close to the ideal of what a man should be of any man in recent memory --- tough, no-nonsense, professional, yet kind, compassionate, and caring for those that mattered to him --- his family and his brothers in arms.

I didn't mind living vicariously through Chris Kyle for a couple of hours. We should all aspire to be such noble creatures.

Darrell

[Francisco Ferrer]

In addition to helping to establish a new government in Iraq with Islam as the state religion, the United States military implemented a nation-wide gun-confiscation program in Iraq. "Operation Iraqi Freedom" meant liberating rifles from their owners. "Noble Hero" Chris Kyle was there to shoot down anyone who objected to that confiscation.

[Darrell Hougen]

Always a cynic.

The glass is always half empty.

What we did in Iraq wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination. One wonders whether we should have been there at all. We should have insisted on Western values in the Constitution of Iraq.

Confiscating guns is justified when they're being used to shoot at the liberating force. Sorry, it's not like we were trying to pry them out of the hands of a bunch of libertarians that just wanted to live in peace.

Chris Kyle was there to defend this country and keep his fellow soldiers safe.

The implication that he was there to shoot down a bunch of libertarians is both absurd and disgusting.

Darrell

[Brant Gaede]

I wonder if this movie is psychologically compatible with being a gut-level libertarian. I'm not that kind of libertarian. I'm just more of one than I used to be. Some people seem to be born libertarian. I'm not talking about the ideas but the psychological relationship to the state and American warriorism. I was actually young enough still for the first Gulf War and up to it in my head, but come 2003 and the coming invasion of Iraq by our oil-drenched-Hussein-tried-to-kill-my-daddy-stupid-ignorant-bull-headed-religious-fanatic of a President and I had had enough and in a much deeper way than I had had enough of Vietnam when I left in 1967. But I'm still an American warrior. I just won't fight for Lincoln. Too bad there's no America. America is a city on a hill. An idea only.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Always a cynic.

The glass is always half empty.

What we did in Iraq wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination. One wonders whether we should have been there at all. We should have insisted on Western values in the Constitution of Iraq.

Confiscating guns is justified when they're being used to shoot at the liberating force. Sorry, it's not like we were trying to pry them out of the hands of a bunch of libertarians that just wanted to live in peace.

Chris Kyle was there to defend this country and keep his fellow soldiers safe.

The implication that he was there to shoot down a bunch of libertarians is both absurd and disgusting.

Darrell

Left libertarians?

--Brant

[anthony]

Brant, I wonder if you have read Up Country, by Nelson deMille. I'ts about Vietnam today, an ex-SF Intelligence guy is 'requested' to go back on a clandestine mission to solve an old murder of an officer. Into a very good plot there is woven-in his feelings visiting old battlegrounds - since I've read quite a lot of Vietnam War fiction, it even left me with a taste of "going back" too. It is very good.

[Francisco Ferrer]

Chris Kyle and the Marine platoons he served with performed house-to-house invasions and weapons snatching. All arms--not just those aimed at the invaders--were verboten. And the weapons owners could expect swift justice in one of the "less than perfect" detention facilities in "liberated" Iraq. We need not concern ourselves too much about those placed under arrest. The idea that any one of them couid have been libertarian is "disgusting." Can you imagine a solid American citizen refusing a polite request from a member of an invading army to turn over his guns? Or trying to hide them under the floorboards? "Absurd."

Chris Kyle fought in Iraq to defend American citizens. It is a well known fact that between 2003 and 2014 Iraqis killed over 4,491 U.S. citizens. To mention that these individuals were on Iraqi soil in a war zone created by the 43rd President of the United States is the height of cynicism and glass-half-emptyism.

Fortunately, there is not one ounce of cynicism in Eastwood's movie about our "noble hero." The plot is simple and straight-forward. U.S. embassies in East Africa are bombed in 1998. Patriotic cowboy Kyle joins the SEALs. The next thing you know Kyle and the gun grabbers are fighting Muslims in Iraq. Fortunately, Eastwood does not bother telling the audience that Saddam had no connection with the bombings.

That would spoil the fun for all the dumbasses in the theatre.

[Brant Gaede]

First, I'll say that I saw the movie and I liked it.

The story is about the true life adventures of Chris Kyle, one of the most successful U.S. snipers of all time. It starts with his early life as a cowboy and follows him as he decides to serve his country after he sees reports of the terrorist attack on the U.S. embassy in Tansania. By the time of the World Trade Center attack, he was already a Navy Seal. The movie skips the war in Afghanistan and jumps to his first of four deployments to Iraq which included places like Fallujah and Sadr City.

Chris Kyle is not exactly Rand's style of hero. Her ideal man, John Galt, is much more intellectual and philosophical than Kyle, but in many respects, Kyle is the all American hero. On some level, he was just an average guy --- modest, unassuming, self-assured. On another level, he was as close to the ideal of what a man should be of any man in recent memory --- tough, no-nonsense, professional, yet kind, compassionate, and caring for those that mattered to him --- his family and his brothers in arms.

I didn't mind living vicariously through Chris Kyle for a couple of hours. We should all aspire to be such noble creatures.

Darrell

How "noble" the man was cannot be known save as myth through a movie. And is this movie fiction on its face? It should be and not with the real names. Using real names and real purported incidents out of a book written by the main protagonist and not a documentary makes the movie lying propaganda on its face. Propaganda from the right that counters the common Hollywood propaganda from the left. Okay--hooray for that. It doesn't matter that I have reason to believe there is a lot of good depicted about good vs evil with Americans as the good guys and the bad guys getting killed by these Americans. In the context of a war being fought you take out your rifle and shoot the bad guys down. The problem is it was a bad war, a wrong war, stupidly fought--not by the soldiers but by the highest higher ups--and after 12 years many lives and a trillion dollars it's all worse than it has ever been in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and the neighboring countries if not all around the world respecting the consequences of "The War On Terror." What's happened merely illustrates the true extent of the genius of George Orwell.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

In war, one shoots the enemy down and wrecks his stuff. It does not matter whether the enemy is good or bad. He is the enemy....

[Brant Gaede]

In war, one shoots the enemy down and wrecks his stuff. It does not matter whether the enemy is good or bad. He is the enemy....

Thanks. I had no idea. That's your sentence #1. #2 is false. #3 is true. True, false, true. You're getting better.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

In war, one shoots the enemy down and wrecks his stuff. It does not matter whether the enemy is good or bad. He is the enemy....

Thanks. I had no idea. That's your sentence #1. #2 is false. #3 is true. True, false, true. You're getting better.

--Brant

The middle one is true also. Allied bombing raids killed infants. Are they bad? Collateral damage is what happens when one goes after the bad guys with area wide weapons.

[Brant Gaede]

deleted

[Brant Gaede]

In war, one shoots the enemy down and wrecks his stuff. It does not matter whether the enemy is good or bad. He is the enemy....

Thanks. I had no idea. That's your sentence #1. #2 is false. #3 is true. True, false, true. You're getting better.

--Brant

The middle one is true also. Allied bombing raids killed infants. Are they bad? Collateral damage is what happens when one goes after the bad guys with area wide weapons.

And if you're the bad guy?

--Brant

yes, the allied bombing raids were bad--war is bad--killing infants is bad--WWII was bad--we have so much to thank Churchill for: look around; it's all around--thanks to "The Great War" (was it "good" the US got into it?)

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

There's a bright young man, Vinay Kolhatkar, from Australia who is both involved in Objectivism and the film industry. (We are Facebook friends.)

He is not happy with American Sniper.

American Sniper and Birdman: A Tale of Two Movies
by Vinay Kolhatkar
Date - kinda Jan 27, 2015*
The Savvy Street

(* This is the date he posted a link to it on Facebook. Man, I hate it when bloggers leave off the dates. It makes hell for correct attribution.)

From the article:

The marketing tagline on IMDb is “Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle’s pinpoint accuracy saves countless lives on the battlefield and turns him into a legend”—that makes it sound like American Sniper is a heroic, thrilling ride with a hero fighting for worthwhile values that are hard to obtain, action sequences, and an inner growth of character. The trouble is—it is not even close.
Much has already been made of the historical inaccuracies in American Sniper, and as to whether he was in fact a hero.

. . .

A basic rule of fiction writing is to create increasing jeopardy.

. . .

Only the highest form of a work of art achieves a cathartic outcome, and clearly, depending on your emotional state of mind, and sense of life, certain works will move you repeatedly, and some never will—to each his own.

. . .

Chris Kyle, the “American Sniper,” starts off as a simpleton cowboy in Texas, coached by his old man to serve God, Country, and Family. He “wakes up” at age 30 and suddenly enlists in the Navy. The triggering incident is a news item about a U.S. embassy bombing. Say what—the most important scene in the movie is a news item?

Then Chris meets a lady in a bar, who will never even date a Marine; he flirts with her. Suddenly, they are married. One day, they are watching TV and live coverage of 9/11 comes on the air. She, with whom we have no connection, cries. Even his POV is centered on the TV, not her. Then suddenly, he is deployed to Iraq. Authenticity—where art thou? Anyone watching this movie will bet that the story is fake, unless they know otherwise.

Of all the details to not mess up, the 9/11 to Iraq sequence needed a better explanation, even schoolchildren in Morocco or Zambia know that 9/11 did not directly lead to Iraq.

In replicating a true story, how did we lose the feel of authenticity?

. . .

... we have an image with a simplistic morality of us versus an undefined “them.” All that Clint Eastwood and Jason Hall (the screenwriter) have given us is a video game of a gun battle between two snipers. A legitimate question is—Is this good enough to be called a movie?

And on he goes.

Kolhatkar certainly knows his Aristotle. I need to see the film, though, and come to my own conclusions. Clint Eastwood is a master storyteller.

Interestingly enough, a screenwriting guru I admire, Brian McDonald, also doesn't like Eastwood for very similar reasons. McDonald thinks Eastwood is sloppy in setting up character motivations and clumsy about some other things, too. I heard him in a podcast blast Unforgiven to pieces. In my book, that was a hell of a great film.

Kolhatkar gives some fine food for thought (including the part about Birdman), even though I suspect I will disagree with his evaluation after I see the movie. He wrote a highly opinionated article, but well worth reading.

Michael