Shooting Down the American Sniper

This American Sniper story is supremely interesting to me. There are so many different levels to this story and so many controversies that it covers just about every base in social, political and entertainment circles. Chris Kyle was a US Navy SEAL who served four tours of duty in Iraq and he lived an odd, interesting, public life, wrote a book, became an icon, was murdered, and posthumously had a movie based on his life. What may or may not have actually happened in real life apparently somewhat differed from what Kyle put into his book, which was adapted and abridged by Clint Eastwood and a team of writers into what is now the number one movie in the US and the largest ever opening for an R-Rated movie in history. Kyle, a blustery, overconfident, uber-patriot is portrayed in the film by Bradley Cooper, who made the film his pet project after Kyle's death. Cooper plays Kyle as a humble, dedicated man who simply wants to protect his country from enemies foreign and domestic. As a long-range sniper, Kyle provides cover for ground troops fighting insurgents and clearing buildings. He doesn't enjoy killing but sees it simply as his duty to protect his brothers. He has his mission broken down to it's simplest form; If he doesn't kill them, they'll kill him. The fact that Clint Eastwood, the Godfather of the lone wolf vigilante film and noted conservative icon, is the architect of Kyle's onscreen story is not lost on the film's critics.

First, the film. American Sniper is, at it's heart, an action movie. Seth Rogen famously called it propaganda but it is really just a run-of-the-mill action movie. It feels hastily put-together and rushes through what should be important parts in Kyle's development. That being said, it does what the best films of its kind do right, namely, putting the battle between the life lived in service and the live lived back at home at the forefront. Kyle, compelled to enlist after seeing the twin towers fall on September 11, 2001, leaves behind his wife, played by Sienna Miller, and children to lay prone on top of crumbling buildings in Iraq to lay cover fire for his fellow servicemen. By the end of his first tour, Kyle has earned the nickname "Legend" among his brothers in arms and has become a god among men. We see Kyle and his squadron as they attempt to gain intelligence on a local warlord known as the Butcher, all the while dodging RPG's and the long range bullets of a very lethal sniper in his own right whom Kyle sees as his own personal mission to eliminate, even at the expense of going off-mission. The film is about determination and obsession and hero worship. Kyle says at one point, "The only thing that haunts me is all the guys I couldn't save." He's explaining to a therapist and himself and the audience that he has no regrets. It's hard to not imagine Eastwood himself playing Kyle if he were 40 years younger, stoically grimacing through the entire affair. Is it worth a $100 million opening weekend? Probably not. But the film itself isn't the only reason it became such a behemoth.

Which brings us to the controversies.

As previously noted, there are three versions of the Chris Kyle story. The film is, frankly, a watered down, cleaned up version of the man's life. That fact should not be held against Eastwood and Cooper, as the abridging of an autobiography for the big screen is a common tactic. However, that glossing over of some of the more controversial aspects of Kyle's life has, in itself, turned into a controversy. It seems that the film has become a litmus test for ones political beliefs, with patriotic right wingers applauding the film as a piece of good old fashioned patriotic filmmaking and liberals complaining that the film glamorizes a war and a soldier, in particular a soldier who is a long-range sniper, which Michael Moore this week called a "cowardly" act, in a way that signifies American imperialism and American warmongering. There have been many blog entries and articles about the lies and lessons that the film is supposedly telling us dumb, impressionable American viewers but I'm fairly certain that nobody is coming into a viewing of this film with a blank slate, you've already made up your mind by now. The only thing to discuss is your already formed opinion. Eastwood has said that the film is not meant to be taken as a political statement but it's hard to separate the man and his well documented statements as a conservative Republican from his work.* A secondary aspect of the controversy that has followed the film is it's surprise appearance on the Oscar ballot, perhaps in lieu of the MLK biopic Selma. While both American Sniper and Selma were both nominated for Best Picture, David Oleyowo's name was absent on the Best Actor in a Leading Role ballot while Cooper's name surprisingly snuck in. The lack of diversity on the ballot this year^  happened at the exact time that the American Sniper hysteria was reaching a full boil and the film was in due course roped into the conversation; a film about a white man of questionable moral fortitude who killed hundreds of people achieving more acclaim than a film about the most important civil rights advocate in American history. Not to mention that the film's director, a black woman, was also absent from the list of Best Director nominees (as was Eastwood). Normally, awards show quibbles are meaningless but when the topic of race is at such a forefront in the national consciousness, this type of oversight becomes an issue. The final aspect of this whole story is the fact that {SPOILER} Chris Kyle was murdered in 2013 by a fellow veteran at a shooting range. The man, Eddie Ray Routh, suffered from PTSD and shot and killed Kyle and another veteran at a shooting range in Texas and led police on a car chase before being caught and confessing to the crimes. Routh is currently awaiting a trial in February where a jury will determine if he was sane or not at the time of the shooting. The problem is, the Kyle legend has become such a big story, both to local Texans and because of the book and film that prosecutors believe the trial may become tainted. It's rare that a major legal trial and a mainstream film based on the true events of that case run into each other at the same time like this. After the film's theatrical run is winding down and after the Oscar's are handed out, the results of the trial will again add a new twist in this complex, strange story.

Perhaps the only winner of this entire story is Hollywood. For an R-Rated movie to make $100 million in it's opening weekend in the barren wasteland of January is a major win for the industry. It won't win any Academy Awards but the fact that the film even made it into the conversation is interesting in itself. Recent films treading similar subjects in the same war such as The Hurt Locker are better but the film is still worth watching. If anything, Bradley Cooper is in top form and Clint Eastwood is still proving that he can make a big action movie with the best of 'em. Go see it and then do some reading, I'm interested in seeing where everyone lands on this. 

*The fact that an 84 year old man directed two major motion pictures this year is, in itself, something that should be noted. While American Sniper has turned into a major success, Eastwood's Four Seasons biopic Jersey Boys was somewhat of a flop earlier this year.

^All twenty actors nominated this year are white, a statistic that, while probably a big picture problem, only adds to the confusion of some of the nominations this year, in my opinion. 

What I'm Enjoying Lately

BBC RADIO DRAMAS - Existing somewhere between an audiobook and a live stage play, full cast dramatization radio plays are kind of like listening to a movie without watching it. Where a standard audiobook will have one voice portraying all dialogue and narration, presentations like these BBC Radio Dramatizations I've been listening to lately employ an entire voice cast along with sound effects and music to create an entire piece. This type of radio play goes way back to the time before television where audiences would tune in to serialized weekly radio shows with recurring and popular characters in all genres. Orson Welles famously adapted H.G. Wells' The War Of The Worlds into a radio production that was produced to sound so realistic that audiences actually believed that they were hearing a radio report of a real-life alien invasion. These shows I've been listening to lately include a series of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett adaptations as well as various H.P. Lovecraft stories, which are particularly enjoyable. I don't drive as much as I used to so the thought of getting through a 10 disc audiobook is now a chore rather than a treat but these fun and different 1 to 2 hour abridged stories are perfect to add to the daily playlist.

WHIPLASH - At this point, it takes a lot for a movie to stick out in my mind in a film landscape awash with movies that are cookie-cutter retreads of the same stories over and over again but every year there are a couple that make the cut. Among all the biopics and controversial films this awards season lies an arguably underappreciated, underseen film made by a first-time 28 year old director called Whiplash. The film gives you the titular sensation as it follows 19 year-old Andrew (Miles Teller) as a talented but troubled music student at a prestigious music academy in New York as he goes from practice room to classroom to stage practicing and practicing and obsessing and bleeding and crying and practicing, practicing, practicing. He wants to be great, not just great at playing the drums, but literally one of the Greats. He stares at photos of his idols tacked to the wall and listens to CDs trying to imbibe their brilliance straight from the speakers. He curses himself and sweats and bleeds all over his kit attempting to perfect his music. His dysfunctional relationship with teacher, tormentor and timekeeper Fletcher (Oscar nominee J.K. Simmons) exists as the classic protagonist v. antagonist until they inevitably realize that they are exactly what they were both looking for, even perhaps they are two sides of the same coin; Andrew wants to be Charlie Parker, Fletcher wants someone to prove they have what it takes to be the next Charlie Parker. Like the song "Caravan" that Andrew plays in the climax, the film slowly builds to a screaming boil until it finally erupts into a brilliant cacophony that literally left me in awe and short of breath. This was the film I've been waiting for Miles Teller to make, something away from the YA adaptations and frat boy schlock he's been associated with for the past few years. Like Jennifer Lawrence was able to do, I think he might be ready to become a real movie star.

THE LONG AND FARAWAY GONE by Lou Berney - The Long And Faraway Gone is a novel that explores the mysteries of memory and how it plays a part in the way we see the world and remember what is important to us. The story consists of two stories told in two different time periods, the summer of 1986 in Oklahoma City and 2012. Wyatt, the only survivor of a massacre at the movie theater he worked at as a teenager and Julianna, whose older sister disappeared at the state fair never to be seen again. Wyatt, now a wiseass private detective in Las Vegas, is forced to return to Oklahoma City on a case and inevitably confront his past in an attempt to find out what really happened that day at the theater and try to find out why he was the only one spared. Julianna, now a nurse struggling to live a normal life, is thrust back into that summer years ago where she was left sitting on a curb eating cotton candy waiting for her sister to return from a chat with a carnival worker. The carny from that day has resurfaced and she is compelled to finally talk to him and find out what he really knows after all these years. What Berney excels at is finding a Dennis Lehane-type way of drawing the reader into a world that is built on the memory of events long-past, where a single act of violence continues to ring through the lives of people struggling to move past it. These two people still in limbo finally and briefly cross paths and in reminiscing about their lives long ago, they might finally be able to uncover what it takes to move on.

THE MARTIAN by Andy Weir - The Martian is a book that I was able to sit and finish in the span of two days, which is rare nowadays for me. The science, math and jargon was way over my head but Weir concocted a story so compelling and interesting that I couldn't stop reading. Mark Whatney, the 17th person in history to set foot on Mars, becomes it's sole inhabitant after his Ares 3 mission goes awry and his crewmates are forced to evacuate the planet after believing him dead. Equipped with a MacGyver-like set of skills and a gallows sense of humor, he survives for over a year and a half on the red planet by cannibalizing his habitat and using the equipment and vehicles like a mechanic uses old cars for spare parts. He builds and takes apart and re-purposes just about everything in his HAB in order to put off the inevitable day where he would run out of food, water, power or all three. The book shifts between Watney's mission logs and the goings-on of NASA back on Earth as they deal with the PR nightmare that erupts after satellite imagery reveals that Watney is, in fact, not dead and that they must now figure out a way to get him home. I have no idea how accurate the tech talk in the book is and frankly I don't really care. It's a very fun and interesting read and will hopefully become a fun, interesting film in the hands of director Ridley Scott and writer Weir. Matt Damon, playing a character noticeably similar (on paper) to the one he played in Interstellar, will anchor a cast that includes the ever-amazing Jessica Chastain as well as Michael Pena, Kate Mara and Sean Bean.