American Sniper (2015) * *

Directed by:  Clint Eastwood

Starring:  Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller

American Sniper, based on the autobiography of Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle, has a subject seen in such broad terms that we never really see who's inside.     There are plenty of debates surrounding the film, concerning such matters as whether the film is celebrating a "killer".   To me, the film whiffs on its chance to be a powerful film about a man to whom war is a drug.    The Hurt Locker covered plenty of the same ground with more insight and more tension.     I expected more, but I was held outside.    I realize the film is only interested in covering Chris Kyle's life as a wartime Navy SEAL in great detail while blowing by the home front scenes in which Kyle's PTSD is evident to everyone but himself.      

Kyle signed up for the Navy SEAL's in the late 1990's as a gung-ho patriot who can't wait to kill terrorists.    Before that, Chris grew up in Texas with a father who preached to him about the art of fighting and hunting.     "If somebody starts a fight, you finish it," says the elder Kyle.   The problem is, Chris doesn't seem to be able to accept when a fight is finished.     Chris and his brother Jeff work aimlessly on the Texas rodeo tour when Chris sees footage of a terrorist attack.     He signs up for the Navy SEAL's and we fast forward to Hell Week, when SEAL trainees are put through torture just for the privilege of graduating to basic training.    Becoming a sniper more or less seems to fit into his pathology if the movie is to be believed. 

Chris meets and falls for Taya (Miller) in a bar.    They marry shortly after 9/11 and days before Chris is shipped overseas to Iraq.     By then, he has become an expert marksman with a keen sense of who should be shot and who should be spared.     His first quandary involves whether to shoot a mother and child who are approaching an Army unit with what looks like a grenade.     There are numerous scenes involve Chris aiming at targets from his lofty perch and shooting them.     One or two of these scenes might have sufficed.     More than that is overkill.

There are plenty of battle scenes because this is where Chris, according to the movie, feels most at home.     When his tours end and he goes home, he is lost amidst a wife and children who are strangers to him.     The scenes involving Chris and Taya take on the same feeling and approach.    Taya chastises Chris on his inability to be present for his family.    His mind is on the war, he doesn't put his family first... Yada, Yada, Yada.     Their relationship never becomes absorbing enough and the film doesn't take its time to flesh out these pivotal scenes.

Chris goes through four tours of duty in Iraq.    He has 160 confirmed kills and referred to as "Legend" by practically everyone.   Like Unbroken, the other guys act as if it is their privilege to be in the same scene with him.   It's as if they read his biography years before it was written.

American Sniper sees Chris as basically a person who is a fanatic about shooting people.   When he retires from the military, he spends his time helping other veterans assimilate into society by taking them to shooting ranges.     We see him forever circling the flame or jumping headlong into it.
The film sees Chris Kyle in such basic, broad terms that we finally just grow weary of him.    The part of his postwar life where he learns to slow down and let his family in is blown by so fast we get whiplash.    Yet, Eastwood and company lovingly cover the war scenes down to the closest detail.     One in particular involving a battle in a dust storm is well done.   There is a certain level of craftsmanship that Eastwood has achieved that he rarely falls below.        

Bradley Cooper's natural exuberance is instead shaped here into a physically imposing man who was born to be a gung-ho soldier.    Cooper is fine here and does what he can, but is ultimately one-note and one-dimensional because the film only chooses to show that side of him.    We know Cooper is capable of so much more.    Miller does the best she can with an underwritten role.     Did Eastwood hedge his bets by concentrating on the battle scenes rather than the other aspects of Kyle?    And what is with Kyle's Iraqi counterpart, who is never fleshed out and seen mostly as a slick ubervillain that Kyle has to one day kill.   American Sniper sees much, but doesn't see through.    It is content on portraying the life of its subject with the depth of a propaganda film.