Bradley Cooper plays Chris Kyle, the deadliest American sniper in history, as he faces four tours of the Middle East in Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper. Review after the jump.
Having already won the Oscar for Best Film twice for both Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby, film legend Clint Eastwood has a good chance of at least being nominated again with his latest movie American Sniper.
Based upon the Chris Kyle’s book, which in turn is based upon true events, American Sniper sees Bradley Cooper play the famed sniper from the Navy Seals, as he hunts down terrorists in the Middle East following the attack on the World Trade Centers.
Much like The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, we are placed amongst the soldiers as they go to war. The film is pretty solid throughout as we see the effect that war has on, not only the soldiers, but their immediate families too. We travel back and forth from all the blood shed caused from the war, to Chris trying to forget what he has done and saw when back with his wife (Sienna Miller) and kids. It can be a tough watch.
Late last year, the studio released a trailer for American Sniper. It wasn’t flashy, just one scene from the movie where Chris has to decide to either shoot a young boy carrying a bomb or to let him go and risk the chance of the young boy using said bomb to kill his fellow soldiers. The trailer was tense, enthralling and made us want to see the film, yet the problem I (now) have with it, is that it was the tensest scene in the movie and we had already seen it.
A lot of the movie also features a showdown of a sniper versus sniper. Chris battles skill and wit with an enemy sniper who has also managed to kill many Americans. Although we always knew who would win, it made for interesting viewing.
One last gripe I had with the film was that the ending felt rushed and sudden. Anybody who knows Chris Kyle’s story would be interested in seeing how they filmed the end, but it cut to black and the credits began to roll after some real footage.
All in all though, Eastwood has delivered another solid movie and Bradley Cooper, who has packed on the muscle for this role, and Sienna Miller are both on great form.
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