American Sniper

I watched 2 movies today- Roy and American Sniper and though I would like this post to be at the top am reviewing it first because I have too many thoughts I need to write down.

The flick was highly recommended by an acquaintance and I downloaded it without knowing what it is about. Of course, the word sniper means it is a war movie. So I could watch it along with KC since he is into such movies. But I realized he likes movies like 'Border' which have some happy ending, songs, melodrama. Everytime I hear 'Border' KC's mimicry of Suniel Shetty or Sunny Deol from the movies reverberates in my ears. Yep, he is good at mimicking people... but it's not funny to hear 'Major Veerbhan Singh' in Sunny Deol like voice.


The movie stars Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller. If I'd known it was directed by Clint Eastwood, I'd taken the pain to read about it first. I find his movies quite sad and kind of boring. I could get go into depression just by watching his movies.

American Sniper is based on the book 'American Sniper : The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S Military History' on Chris Kyle life. Chris, played by Bradley, enlists in the Navy and is accepted in SEAL training, making him a U.S Navy SEAL Sniper. He is sent to Iraq after 9/11. He gets married to Tara, Sienna, before leaving for the war. In Iraq, he kills 160 (official figure)- 255 (unofficial number) Iraqis and earns the nickname 'Legend'.

He goes on 4 tours in Iraq and every time his wife requests him to come home to his kids. During the last tour, he gets stuck in an ambush and decides to go home this time. But once he is back, his mind is still not back. A psychiatrist suggests he help out the other war veterans and that's what Chris starts doing. In Feb, 2013 he gets killed by a war veteran. I don't know why. The movie does not tell us why.

The story and everything is ok but there are so many parts missing. Like:

- The other side of war is not shown. Technically, Iraqis were trying to save their country whereas the Americans were  'terrorists'. Their reason for the war- that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction but no proof. In reality, Americans were the demons and Iraqis the patriots. This movie shows the contrary

- There are scenes where Chris kills women and children. But it's shown that they were 'savages' and attacking Americans. There is no mention of Americans randomly killing women and children which also happened

- According to many reviews on IMDB, Chris loved to kill and he bragged about his killings. Which is a sign of 'cold bloodedness' in a person and not normal... at all. 

- There are no grey areas at all. Iraqis are bad, Americans are good. There is no conflict, no guilt, no remorse. Till the end Chris maintains that he is sorry he did not save enough soldiers in the war. 

This is a very one dimensional movie and not to be believed at all. It has wasted 2 hours of my life which are never coming back. Excluding 30 mins watching Roy.