War hero with feet of clay

FILM
American Sniper (MA15+)
4.5 stars
Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller
DIRECTOR CLINT EASTWOOD
REVIEW MARK NAGLAZAS

I'm loath to call Clint Eastwood's adaptation of the bestselling autobiography of Iraq War hero Chris Kyle a great action movie because of the seriousness of the subject matter.

Kyle was proclaimed the most lethal sniper in US military history with 160 confirmed kills out of 255 "probable" kills, so you cannot watch American Sniper without thinking of real bullets ripping into flesh and ending lives.

However, Eastwood reminds us how much tension can be generated from old-fashioned classical filmmaking, how thrilling it can be when a director at the peak of his powers shoots not for sensation but sense.

Eschewing the hyper-adrenalised style favoured by the video-clip generation or the so-called shaky-cam popularised by Paul Greengrass in his Bourne movies, Eastwood carefully lays out each encounter between the American occupying forces and the insurgents so we're never confused about what's happening.

We are there with the troops and it's both a rush and frightening.

But it's not just the aesthetics of the battle scenes that make American Sniper a great war movie and why it has become both a box-office and cultural phenomenon in the US, where it took more than $US100 million ($1.22 million) during its opening weekend (it posted the kind of numbers you only expect from a popcorn franchise).

American Sniper works because we're so deeply invested in the film's hero (Bradley Cooper), a patriotic country boy from Texas and professional rodeo rider who in the wake of the bombings of US embassies in Africa in 1998 joined the Navy SEALS.

Kyle was older than the rest of the recruits and Eastwood and screenwriter Jason Hall have much fun with drill sergeants mocking his age. "You're old enough to have fathered half these boys," barks one, a line that must have made the 84-year-old Eastwood smile.

However, Kyle's ability with a rifle, honed during years of childhood hunting trips with his disciplinarian father, sees him given the relatively safe and cushy job of sniper during the invasion of Iraq in the wake of 9/11. His job is to sit atop buildings and take out threats to troops on the ground.

When Kyle makes the decision to shoot a mother and her child carrying a grenade they were going to toss at an approaching group of Marines - a beautifully staged scene that is both exciting and nails the sniper's existential dilemma - he stakes his claim for a place within American military folklore, building his legend through four blood-soaked tours of duty.

And it is not simply his ability to pick off the enemy at long range that earned Kyle the respect of his fellow soldiers. When he sees that the new recruits are sitting ducks as they go from house to house looking for insurgents Kyle puts down his sharp-shooter's rifle and takes a leadership role on the ground, using his bravery and knowledge to protect the younger men.

While Kyle is seemingly invincible on the battlefield, the cracks start appearing in his psyche, which has an impact on his wife (Sienna Miller) and the mother of their children.

The stoic, deeply patriotic Kyle doesn't complain about the horrors of war, like those of less-stern stuff such as his fragile soldier-brother Jeff (Keir O'Donnell), with whom he crosses paths on a tarmac in a chilling, heartbreaking scene.

But throughout this most beautifully calibrated movie, in which Eastwood's own measured, masculine style matches that of his tight-lipped hero, all the terrible things that Kyle has done and seen chip away at this granite-like warrior.

American Sniper is not a movie about the rights and wrongs of the US involvement in the Middle East. Nor is it about the conduct of the war (the officers are only a notch or two higher than the men putting their necks on the line).

Which is why American Sniper has been such a hit in the wake of a series of Iraq War movies that have failed at the box office, according to industry watchers. It has also opened up Eastwood for criticism for making a movie celebrating a professional killer.

While Eastwood never questions or mocks Kyle's country-boy patriotism, American Sniper is anything but flag-waving propaganda.

It is about the impact of war on the men and women on the front line and, by extension the damage done to the whole country.

The real-life Chris Kyle might have been more of a racist gung-ho redneck (according to some accounts) but Eastwood's hero is professional and stoical to a fault.

Eastwood's quietly purposeful filmmaking is matched by the remarkable performance of Cooper, whose character says little and doesn't emote much but the ocean of agony welling up behind that pumped-up frame will leave you on the edge of your seat.

His character is an authentic American hero but Eastwood's wonderfully judged movie will forever remind us that such towering figures can have feet of clay.

American Sniper opens today.