Movie review: American Sniper

american-sniper

Just like Fury isn’t a movie about World War II, American Sniper isn’t about the Iraq wars.
Nor is it about 9/11 and it’s aftermath.
And certainly not about an American Sniper.
This movie is about America.

This is what a hero should look like according to yourself, Eastwood tells us.. Did you not decorate him? Did you not buy his biography in droves. Did you not read the book from cover to cover? Did you not gulp down the story of an all American blond haired, blue-eyed Caucasian guy with a pretty girl-next-door wife, who goes out to protect the greatest country on earth?
A man of duty?
A man of inner nobility?
An all American hero?

This is why it doesn’t matter whether the movie is set in Iraq, the Outer Hebrides or Middle Earth.
This is why it doesn’t matter who the enemy is.
And this is why it doesn’t matter whether the movie contains a truth or not.
The only thing that matters is the larger than life depiction of an unblemished hero.

And Eastwood doesn’t hold back and goes one step further.
The American sniper invades, for it matters not.
The American sniper shoots enemy soldiers, because they are not.
The American sniper takes out women and kids, because they are not.
.
Any unease that an American soldier might have shot a someone in violation of the Geneva-convention is taken away by clearly depicting the enemy for what they are: they are orcs

Is that what really happened, America? Was every civilian death such a clear case of the enemy using any means whatsoever and thus justifying a reaction in kind? Did you really wait for the civilians to show their hostile intent before gunning them down?Did the fog of war not exist? Or did you flatten their houses and mow them down with machine guns before they could become a threat? All to protect the greatest country on earth?

Perhaps it was Eastwood’s intent, or perhaps not, but the movie is a mirror to what America is not. The more shinier the American sniper becomes the starker the contrast with reality this picture is.

The American sniper is all what an American soldier should be like..
So unlike reality..

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