The 1st review of 2015 is also the 1st time a director´s work gets a 2nd review in The MacMahonian. The honour goes to Clint Eastwood.
American Sniper is Clint Eastwood´s 34th feature film and it consolidates (perhaps deliberately) his reputation as a latter day American classic.
Based on the eponymous autobiography of Chris Kyle, the US Navy´s most decorated sniper ever, with 160 certified kills (it seems that´s what they call it) during the II Iraq War, American Sniper is like The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, 1978) meets Redacted (Brian de Palma, 2007). It features Bradley Cooper, fittingly blank faced, in the title role.
In characteristic Eastwood style, Sniper neither condones nor condemns its protagonist, portraying the life of the US marines in Iraq in a way that may confuse and disturb both detractors and supporters of that ill-fated military adventure (this may be a redundant expression). Kyle´s PTSD is portrayed but not flaunted: at one point he is shown telling a psychologist he has no feelings of guilt, his only regret are the marines he didn´t save (implicitly by killing even more Iraqis). The MacMahonian holds that taking moral/political sides is not the task of the film maker, but it is the result of the film; in this, Sniper isn´t easy to pin down. That mustn´t detract from its merits, not least Clint Eastwood´s refined puritanical dramatic style, alternating crude (as when Kyle is shown killing a 12-year old boy who was about to throw a grenade into a US UMV – a sequence intertwined with one of the most effective flashbacks in recent memory) with prude (as when Kyle´s death, in the final sequence, is elided) and orchestrating with full confidence a script consisting mostly of clichés (the long-suffering family “stateside”, the “home-front” etc.) and disarmingly candid jingoistic proclamations (why did Kyle volunteer for 4 tours of duty in Iraq? “because America is the greatest country in the world and we need to protect it”).
A noteworthy start for the year (although the film is dated 2014, so Sniper won´t count for this years´ stats) and a high point in Clint Eastwood´s canon, although maybe mostly for canonists.