Bradley Cooper delivers plenty of emotions, besides gunshots, in American Sniper.

American Sniper (2014)
Certified: 12
Duration: 133 minutes
Directed by: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, Max Charles, Luke Grimes, Kyle Gallner, Sam Yaeger, Sammy Sheik, Jake McDorman, Cory Hardrict, Navid Negahban, Eric Close
KRS Releasing Ltd

American Sniper is currently storming the US box office after bringing in six Academy Award nominations and happily raising plenty of discussion.

The film, based on Chris Kyle’s autobiography American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in US Military History published in 2012, sees director Clint Eastwood returning to form.

The plot is set in 1998. Bradley Cooper plays Chris Kyle who is on the road to become a rodeo rider. All his life, he has followed his father’s credo, that there are three kinds of people: sheep, wolves and sheepdogs, meaning that there always needs to be someone to protect the others, otherwise the innocents will suffer. A number of events eventually lead Chris to enrol and become a Navy Seal.

He subsequently meets Taya (Sienna Miller), the two get married and he ends up deployed for military duty.

Chris becomes a sniper and is sent to Iraq. He is often accompanied by Marc Lee (Luke Grimes) who is also a Seal officer. Soon he becomes very good at killing people and he becomes well renowned for his skills.

Chris’s tours of duty and each subsequent kill start having an effect on him, his personality, his way of thinking and behaviour. This is not an easy life for him to cope with especially now that he is a father.

Central to the film is the charismatic pairing of Eastwood and Cooper. Eastwood has always been enamoured, both as director and as an actor, of heroes that are besieged on all fronts; silent heroes who rigidly keep from letting out the doubts and insecurities that are boiling inside of them.

Cooper is easily one of the Academy Award’s top contenders as we see him fighting an inner war, trying to dull the emotions inside him by investing so much in war.

Under Eastwood’s firm hand, Cooper and, even more so, Miller, do not enter into any over-the-top melodramatic performances that are so symbolic of this genre to bring out patriotic fervour. Instead, the performances show the numbness that living such a life can eventually lead to.

It’s very difficult to resist the allure of Eastwood’s direction who at 84 shows he still has more muscle than other younger directors. He builds the film like a thriller and delivers many messages along the way. He is helped in no small way by the cinematography of Tom Stern which is colourful, vibrant and gives both the urban war environment of Iraq and also what happens at the home front a life of their own.

The film is tight, strong and melancholic in its own manner, the ending is in its own manner ironic and leaves one with a variety of mixed emotions.