American Sniper

A brutal, action-packed, powerful, emotional, properly American patriotic and simply beautifully retold story of a legendary sniper in an actual war. The film is very action packed, there is frequent gunfire, the pacing is decent, the dialogue is classy, the cinematography is slick, Bradley Cooper is perfect, Mustafa the sneaky Arab sniper and Cooper’s biggest rival is also brilliant, he gives a flashback to Enemy at the Gates. Perhaps the only representative of this year's Oscars that really deserves it. I liked Lone Survivor a bit more, but this is also a very solid and engaging affair 80% (21.01.2015)

Biography of the sniper from Texas, Chris Kyle, who had about 150 kills scratched into his rifle stock. Eastwood has become a hitmaker in his latter years (90 million views over one weekend!) and a very moderate war movie director. Not so many kills as such, they are restrained, realistic and not even Kyle is counting (he’s so cool). Probably because we all know what a farce Iraq was, there’s no delving into politics. Simply a classic pursuit movie with ragheads with a polite duel going on in the background. The picture pretends that sniping itself isn’t playing the main role, but in fact it’s a conflict with Mustafa and the hunt for Butcher that help the viewer differentiate between the separate tours. The classic development of the Navy Seals and is all too familiar, thank you very much Eastwood for presenting it in more entertaining form. Cooper is very convincing in his transformation from man to robot and back again, at crucial moments he doesn’t act like a hero, but like a psychopath. His dead soul is visible in his cold blue eyes (that’s why Kyle wears sunglasses almost all the time). Movies like Hurt Locker don’t have this, that’s probably why this movie works much better. Emotions come across artificial, but on the other hand the finale works well, sad, even though the main message becomes a little blurred. P.S.: I’m a great fan of the Punisher, so I seriously enjoyed the scene about the “graphic novel". The armor and magazines with the skull stencil looked damn good. Hooyah! (19.01.2015)

Cooper aims high; he wants recognition and Oscars. And he obviously tempted Clint Eastwood into this with a high fee. Otherwise, Clint wouldn’t go for it, as the script doesn’t offer much space for his narrative talent (the emotional scenes with the wife could have been done by anyone). The simplicity and straightforwardness of the film, which does not bring anything new under the helmet and relies solely on the potential of the real Chris Kyle’s fate, will delight on one hand (the film engages viewers without imposing higher demands on them), but due to the use of all sorts of clichés and the absence of its own personality (which the identically construed but less oversimplified The Hurt Locker did have), it is not entitled to any Oscars. Unless the Academy intends to openly admit that it is more about politics than movies. The key action scene (Butcher + drill + boy) has masterful editing. But the second half of the movie needs to be shortened. (17.02.2015)

The film is divided into two parts. One takes place in Iraq and the other in the homeland. Leaving aside the fact that Bradley Cooper plays his role with absolute precision, I must add that everything else is just plain wrong. There is very little going on in Iraq. There are a few key scenes here, but that’s definitely not enough for a good film. Take the first scene, for example. It is a masterpiece in and of itself. However, the two parts intersect in the most suspenseful moment and suddenly Clint makes a cutto the protagonist’s past life in the States. The tension rapidly drops and we’re left with no choice but to watch why Chris left for Iraq to begin with. After a while, the pace picks up and you suddenly realize this movie has zero emotion. Chris is in America, then in Iraq, then returns to America and ends up in Iraq again. All of this with no emotions, unlike in Hurt Locker which worked pretty well in this respect. Here I had a problem watching it to the end. Simply put, I was disappointed. I expected American Sniper to be something in the vein of contemporary war films such as Hurt Locker or Jarhead, but what I got was a completely routine job, which engages neither with its story nor with the locations. (06.02.2015)

Eastwood's precise shot, which is likely to be mistaken for pathos when defending the American way of thinking, stands out above all. This is due to the fact that, despite a significant part of the runtime being spent on the battlefield, it manages to retain a civilian atmosphere, rather giving Kyle's extraordinary "skill" lip service because, at his core, the protagonist remains that pure American redneck who, in Cooper's excellent, paunchy Texan delivery, blathers on about defending the country, and yet you know he means it with unapologetic sincerity; its length and the empty brothers storyline are the only things that the film can be faulted for. Even J. Edgar wanted to look like this. (18.01.2015)