American Sniper: A Movie with Issues

By Rick Rogers
Special to Homeland Magazine

American Sniper deserves its popularity and its six Oscar nominations.

Bradley Cooper’s portrayal of brawny former SEAL super sniper Chris Kyle has been lauded for its subtle, and director Clint Eastwood’s work for its depth and sensitivity.

But if it is a great movie, it is great because of the issues it raises, issues important to millions of combat veterans, tens of millions who call them father, mother, uncle, aunt and friend and hundreds of millions more who relied them to do the country’s bidding.

All of which makes this film more vital than any epic, especially here in San Diego, home to the most modern-era combat veterans in the country.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, the movie is about the exploits of Kyle – aka The Legend – the Odessa, Texas native brought up with a rifle in his hands and a very strong sense of duty in his heart.

Looking for a purpose after a severe arm injury ended his bronco-riding career, Kyle joins the Navy in 1999 and goes to SEAL school after being rejected by the Marines and initially by the sea service. The movie then follows him to war.

It’s not giving anything away to mention that Kyle miraculously survives four combat tours in Iraq where he is blown up and shot multiple times while protecting Marines only to be killed at a stateside gun range by a Marine veteran apparently suffering from a war-related mental illness.

The movie is ostensibly about Kyle, who racked up 160 confirmed kills, and what he, his comrades and family experienced before, during and as a result of combat.

His bestselling memoir American Sniper, on which the film is based, was published in 2012.

The film célèbre debuted in December is already poised to replace “Saving Private Ryan” as the top grossing war film of all time.

The San Marcos theatre where I watched one Saturday night was packed, dispelling any notion American Sniper is simply a runaway hit in the red South and Midwest. Such mass popularity for a film about this modern conflict is rare. Other movies about the Iraq war, notably The Hurt Locker, have not fared nearly as well.

I’ll dispense rehashing the controversial opening scene — much less the banal partisan bickering over the film’s real or perceived political agenda — and get to the wider ripple of the film after a brief detour.

American Sniper appears destined for much interpretation and analysis. All ready in its brief life it’s stirred much debate. Some have touted it as glorifying combat while others call it anti-Muslim.

More recent reviewers claim the film is actually a slyly anti-war manifesto in the garb of a pro-war movie.

Unsurprisingly, American Sniper – and I expect this to be so for all the Iraq veterans who see it – brings back memories.

My date asked if it accurately reflected my time as an embedded reporter in the summer of 2004. The answer is no. No film could ever possibly capture the smell, heat and threat of the place or the sense that incalculable fate hung on every decision whether where to take a leak or what side of the truck to sit.

These are cosmetic, cosmic and constant details that unless you live with them every day seem absurd. But then killing and being killed for a living is absurd.

All I can tell you is that the experience quickly shapes – or warps — your sense of identity, mission and the enemy. Very quickly most troops decide the place is not worth dying for and adopt a mind set that most assures survival.

Later back home there are often problems in the form of Post Traumatic Stress and accompanying guilt, anger and intrusive thoughts.

Paradoxically, it’s these scenes in American Sniper, which might be pure invention, that are film’s greatest gifts.

Kyle did four combat tours in Iraq and every tour took another bite out of him – and his family — emotionally and physically.

This is depicted in scenes showing elevated blood pressure; him calling his family from a bar after returning from a deployment unannounced and losing his temper on more than one occasion.

The accompanying anguished cries of his wife have the ring of a sadly familiar war soundtrack.

“I’m making memories by myself.”

“Even when you are here, you’re not here.”

“If you think the war isn’t changing you, you’re wrong. You can only circle the flame for so long.”

Whatever personal problems Kyle faces, those around him fare worse. His brother, a deployed service member, disintegrates into a disillusioned zombie. Others die or are broken.

This is not war rendered heroic, where real or imagined moral superiority provides internal peace much less absolution, but instead a nod to the fact when blood flows all are stained.

Two scenes at the end of the movie stand out.

One is when Kyle and other U.S troops are nearly killed after he vanquishes his archenemy. What ultimately saves them is a sand storm, possibly a metaphor for the fog of war, which allows escape.

In the next scene, Kyle is stateside talking to a Department of Veterans Affairs counselor in San Diego, where he agrees to help other vets — and possibly himself.

In 2009 Kyle left the military, moved to Texas with his family and started a tactical training company for law enforcement military personnel named Craft International. He also increased his outreach to veterans working through their wartime experiences.

Then in early 2013, troubled Marine veteran Eddie Ray Routh shot Kyle and Chad Littlefield to death at a shooting range.

In the end super warrior Kyle addressed his issues by reaching out to others. That powerful message should resonate among San Diego’s combat veterans where asking for help still carries a stigma.

Rick Rogers is a longtime military writer based in San Diego.