2015 #131
Clint Eastwood | 133 mins | streaming (HD) | 2.35:1 | USA / English | 15 / R
Clint Eastwood | 133 mins | streaming (HD) | 2.35:1 | USA / English | 15 / R
Politics aside, American Sniper is an adequately-made film. Eastwood’s direction is at best workmanlike, at worst laughably clichéd. Jason Hall’s screenplay rehashes better movies’ insights into the mental effects of war on combatants. Neither elicit much excitement from a half-arsed sniper-vs-sniper storyline. The film belongs to a bulked-up Bradley Cooper, who reportedly displays more nuance than Chris Kyle had in real life.
Politically, it isn’t quite the distasteful right-wing paean its American reception and success might have you expect, but it’s certainly blinkered, nationalistic, occasionally racist, and unenlightening. Perhaps, as a portrait of a modern American serviceman, that’s only appropriate.
100Films.co.uk 
Lol. Yeah… I really had no interest in seeing this. Reading this, I still don’t. 😉
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I only really watched it to see what all the fuss was about. I wouldn’t say I was pleasantly surprised, but it could’ve been worse — not a ringing endorsement!
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Yeah I was rather underwhelmed myself. It’s not bad but hardly deserves all the attention/acclaim it had at the time.
That said, its great to see Eastwood still working. It’ll be the end of an era if ever he does retire. He’s been working either infront or behind the camera all my life.
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He seems like the kind of person who’ll keep working until he goes — which, if he follows in his mother’s footsteps, could be over a decade yet!
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