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American Sniper (a movie review post)

One thing I've learned in the past few weeks is that you shouldn't say anything bad about American Sniper. Well, unless you want to be vilified, that is. The thing is, none of the negative comments I've heard about Sniper are actually incorrect. Setting that aside for the moment, though, Sniper is a fine film. Predictable. Contrived. It's a solid piece of movie making, as you would expect from Clint Eastwood. And Bradley Cooper is good. Not great. Not best actor worthy, but he is good.

The film, as a film, is also not "best" worthy. It doesn't stand out as a movie at all. The thing that sets it apart is that it is a "true" story, so, because of its nomination, it's impossible to look at Sniper as just a movie other than to say that if it was fiction (which it is), no one would care about this movie. It is not powerful in any way other than the tragedy of the life it was based on.

And, by all accounts, that life was a tragedy. Chris Kyle was not a "good" guy. He was an asshole who liked to get into fights, who looked for any excuse to get into a fight, you know, to prove how much of a man he was or whatever. In that, he was the essence of the modern "cowboy" they played him off to be at the beginning of the movie. He was a braggart who let everyone know just how much of a "legend" he was and who exaggerated about how many men he'd killed, even making up stories about men he didn't kill just to make himself look... I don't know, even more "manly" or badass.

Of course, I didn't know Kyle, but those are the kinds of things he said, and those are the kinds of things people who knew him said about him. At least, that's the kind of stuff that was said about him before he was murdered. I don't know if he was turning his life around those last couple of years or not. What I do know is that he proclaimed that all proceeds from his book were being donated to veterans' groups, something which was completely not true. In reality, only about 2% of what was made was donated.

So, in respect to all of that, the movie does seem like a piece of propaganda to me, but a piece of propaganda about Chris Kyle more than anything else. See, in the movie he is this humble guy who doesn't like the reputation he's earned and doesn't like to talk about how many people he's killed. In fact, they play it off as if he doesn't even really know. He's just trying to protect people and the numbers don't matter. Because Kyle is being held up as "true American hero," it's like they needed to re-write his life to make him out to be a nice guy. A nice guy who does his job like any good American would; it's just that his job happens to be killing people. Something he's very humble about.

In the movie, that is. I need to stress that. Because his personality is completely the opposite in the movie to what he was supposed to be like.

Not mention all of the other things they made up for the movie. For instance, Kyle had no sniper nemesis. The whole showdown at the end of the movie was completely made up. He was much younger in life when he joined the military than he was in the movie. Why make him older? That doesn't make any sense at all. Basically, the only things they got right were the very broad strokes. There was a guy named Chris Kyle from Texas who was a SEAL and a sniper who spent time in Iraq. And he had a wife named Taya.

What all of this comes down to for me is one question: What makes a someone a hero? Why are we, as a culture, holding Kyle up as this great hero? I mean, he has his own day, now, in Texas. Is it because he killed a bunch of people? Is that what makes someone a hero? Is it because he risked his life for his country? Because lots of people do that, and we don't consider them heroes. Is it because, at the end of it all, he was murdered while trying to help someone?

I think, certainly, that the movie version of Kyle has been molded into someone whom we would call a hero. Just a humble guy doing his best to serve God, serve his country, and, mostly, sacrificing his family to do it... because family comes third after God and country. But, once home, he is going about repairing the damage he did by being away. He's become a good husband and a good dad and he's still out trying to help people. It makes the tragedy of his death that much worse.

But that's movie Kyle. Of course, that's the Kyle that most of us are going to remember. Now, it is, at any rate. I'm not so sure real life Kyle would meet those heroic standards. Maybe that's not important? Maybe the current cultural need for a "real hero" outweighs the reality of the person. I don't really know.

None of which answers the question about whether you should see this movie. I suppose it depends upon whether you want to see a very black and white (as in there are no foreigners depicted in the movie who are good; they are all savages and none of them can be trusted) representation of a fantastical hero figure who was given a gift by God to shoot people. There are no questions in this movie: We are good. Chris Kyle is good. They are bad, Period.

As a side note, I found it very interesting that The Punisher (from Marvel Comics) was so pervasive in the movie. It is certainly symbolic of the mindset (whether that was based on a fact or not). I would point out that The Punisher is only considered a hero in that he is an anti-hero. He does bad things, evil things sometimes, to bad people because no one else will. He is the only one who decides who deserves those things to happen to them. Is that the "hero" we want America to be equated with? I hope not. If we're going to aspire to a national hero, I'd much prefer Captain America. Maybe we would have done a better job over in Iraq if Cap had been our goal.

Captain Phillips (a movie review post)

Yes, we did go see Captain Phillips even though neither of us really wanted to. However! It was making a special appearance at the cheap theater, so we both got in for less than the cost of even one matinee-priced ticket at the normal theater. No, I'm not sure it was even worth that much.

The question I kept asking myself as I was watching the movie and have continued to ask since seeing the movie is "Why did this need to be a movie?" My wife says it's because we need to have movies each year that feature the American military as the good guys, but I'm just not quite buying it. I mean, that's probably true, but it just doesn't do it for me.

Yes, there will be spoilers. Not like everyone doesn't already know how this turns out.

There are a few interesting parts in the movie, but they're not enough to give the movie any real depth. For instance, the movie opens with a scene of Phillips readying himself for his trip. [It's actually the kind of thing I routinely tell my creative writing class not to do: Do not give us your character waking up in the morning, brushing his teeth and eating breakfast. We don't care. Unless there actually is some relevance to the story. Not that that is what see with Phillips, but it's the same kind of thing, but it does have a point.] It's completely normal and middle class, him going off to the airport. I have to say, though, that the dialogue between Phillips and his wife is terrible. It switches, then, to the character of Muse and how his day starts. It serves to show us how very different these two characters are and, yet, how they are similar. So, yeah, that was interesting, but that's the first 10 minutes or so and nothing's that interesting the rest of the movie.

The whole movie can be boiled down to one conversation between Phillips and Muse:
Phillips: There has to be something more than fishing and kidnapping people.
Muse: Maybe in America. Maybe in America.

I think that moment is so short that it gets lost in the rest of the movie. And the movie does nothing to support it, since it focuses on Phillips and not what drove the pirates to do what they do.

The thing I was most struck with, though, is not something I think I was meant to think about:
The pirates were trying to ransom Phillips for $10 million. In response, we mounted a huge Naval engagement which included airdropping in a bunch of SEALs and an aircraft carrier. The recovery mission took days. I'm sure the cost of the rescue mission dwarfed the 10 million the pirates wanted. I'm not saying we should have paid them off, because I don't that at all. I do think there has to be a better way, though. [And because I was curious, the cost to operate an aircraft carrier per day is $7 million! And it was one of only three Navy ships involved in the mission. The mission which lasted several days. So, yeah, we spent WAY more than $10 million to get Phillips back.]

As for the acting, I was unimpressed. Hanks showed up and was appropriately stoic through most of the film. The only real acting he did was at the very end after he was rescued, at which point he has a complete meltdown. That scene with him was great, but the rest of the movie was pretty flat. His acting, all the acting, the whole movie. Let's just say that, overall, I was particularly underwhelmed. It was kind of like watching the "high speed" chase of O.J. Simpson on TV a couple of decades ago. Oh, except for the brief moment where I thought the movie was about to become Home Alone as the crew did things like spread broken glass on the floor for the barefoot pirates to step on. But that didn't last long enough to be engaging.

Basically, the movie gets a "meh" from me. It wasn't stupid (which, you know, would have been pretty bad considering it's based on true events), but it also just didn't do anything for me. I never cared about any of the people involved except for brief moments for the "pirate" kid that stepped on the glass; he was only 15-ish. But, then, Muse was only 16-ish (which never comes out in the movie. If they'd highlighted that, there may have been some emotional investment, but, then, it might have been invested in the "bad" guys). This just isn't an Oscar caliber movie. It's better than The Wolf of Wall Street but not by much. It is, however, politically correct, I would suppose.