American Sniper | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Once again, this April 23, 2015, "American Snipe" is back in the news, this time being repressed from University of Maryland students.

    Publisher's note: When you finish this Wyatt review, please spend a few moments using our Movie Database, and feel welcome to return. Nearly everything important to movies, plus great images are there.

    
Every Great War Film is a Great Anti War Film

    When Chris Kyle was a young boy growing up in central Texas, he learned to hunt, to fight to win, he loved Jesus, bronco busting and enjoyed pretty girls. How was it that he grew up to become the ultra patriot, an American hero, and now with the critically acclaimed film about his life as a soldier breaking box office records, someone immortalized, lionized?

    Simply, Chris Kyle was reared by a God fearing church deacon, Wayne Kyle, played by Ben Read, who taught him to hunt, know Jesus, and to understand the ways of this world, personified in these comments he made to Chris as a pre-adolescent:

    “There are three types of people in this world: sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs,” Wayne Kyle implores his receptive son to know. “Some people prefer to believe that evil doesn’t exist in the world, and if it ever darkened their doorstep, they wouldn’t know how to protect themselves. Those are the sheep.”

    “Then you’ve got predators, who use violence to prey on the weak. They’re the wolves. And then there are those blessed with the gift of aggression, an overpowering need to protect the flock. These men are the rare breed who live to confront the wolf. They are the sheepdog.”

    Wayne Kyle, as the good Christian father, extolled his son, Chris, to be the sheepdog. This prophetic pronouncement was employed throughout the Jason Hall screenplay of the Chris Kyle autobiography, then finely crafted into this Clint Eastwood film, as the seminal thread that drove Chief Petty Officer Kyle to be 'America's most lethal sniper'.
Chris Kyle, Bradley Cooper, behind the sniper rifle preparing for his kill, with Marine Corp spotter /guard (behind): Above.    Click on image to expand.

    Yes, this Navy SEAL did kill women and children. Let's go ahead put that 'red meat' on the table. The film does not skirt around this truth; Director Eastwood reveals this reality in the first scene, which was true in real life for the legendary sniper - the initial kills for Chief Kyle, his first two of a confirmed 160 kills (actual number closer to 255 kills) were a pre-adolescent boy and a woman (probably the child's mother).

    If your initial reaction is what kind of American hero would kill women and children, and then call the Iraq insurgents savages? You might should rather consider: What semblance of a society, governed by a strict religious sect, would push women and children - many of them - to confront American armored convoys with RPG grenades and other suicide based explosives to do the killing of American soldiers for their rather unproductive men. To continue a clarion point, for a clear thinking individual, especially an American citizen: Why would you care what Navy SEAL Chris Kyle was tasked to do, to save Marine lives, providing he remained within the United States Military's stringent rules of engagement?
Chris Kyle, Bradley Cooper, has a few reflective moments as he deals with his 'job' of taking the lives, with great prejudice, of enemy combatants - men, women and children: Above.    Click on image to expand.

    Regardless of one's innate view of the proprietary of principled conduct during the 'fog of war', one must respect the artistry of the re-creation of narrative to celluloid; to tell the story convincingly and true, irrespective of how difficult of a tale it is to digest here in the civilized world of the United States of America. Elsewhere, in the corners of a more barbaric world, where 'honor killings', female genital mutilation, the stoning of women raped, homosexual genocide, and women denied any education, just to name a few of the societal atrocities within the Muslim world of the Middle East, most Americans are ill equipped with the wisdom or the intelligence to judge what soldiers, like Chris Kyle, did, and do, to protect their brothers in arms.
Chris Kyle, Bradley Cooper (rear, right), with his brother Navy SEALs hearing direct orders to go after 'The Butcher of Baghdad', with U.S. Marines: Above.    Click on image to expand.

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    Accordingly, these dual threads of this tale of heroism and abject sacrifice: 1) The warrior spirit of the super soldier, who serves with great honor for 'God and Country', but, moreover, exhibits the incomparable vigilance to protect fellow SEALs, and act as a veritable overlord, with sniper rifle at the ready, to safeguard the lives of Marines in his charge; 2) the difficult decompression of the super soldier, who, irrespective of his ambition to deny his condition, suffered from profound PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). Director Eastwood's treatment of these two issues, in his trademark succinct style, spare in composition, extraordinary as a communicative device, Mr. Eastwood's film is a work of art reminiscent of his best work in "Gran Torino", "Million Dollar Baby" and "Unforgiven".

    Director Eastwood, as is his directorial style, condensed the essence of Chris Kyle's disordered predicament to a short meeting with a VA Psychologist:

    Navy Doctor: "Would you be surprised if I told you that the Navy has credited you with... over 160 kills?"

     Navy Doctor: "Do you ever think that... you might have seen things or... done some things over there that you wish you hadn't?"

    Chris Kyle: "Oh, that's not me. No."

    Navy Doctor: "What's not you?"

    Chris Kyle: "I was just protecting my guys, they were trying to kill... our soldiers and I... I'm willing to meet my Creator and answer for every shot that I took."

    Chris Kyle: "The thing that... haunts me are all the guys that I couldn't save."

    Chris Kyle: "Now I'm willing and able to... be there but I'm not, I'm here I quit."

    Because of the film's indisputable sense for exhibiting the essential reality of war, "American Sniper" is nominated for Best Picture, among another 5 nominations, in this year's Oscar Awards. Bradley Cooper is nominated for Best Actor. His role as the heroic, conflicted Chris Kyle was as integral to this emotional tale of the ultimate human experience, as the expressive Jason Hall screenplay, and Clint Eastwood's tight, extra-efficient direction. Without Actor Cooper's visceral performance successfully transferred to a primed and receptive audience, the film would have simply been sufficient as entertainment, but not noteworthy to indelibly memorialize this hero, this good man - Chris Kyle.
Chris Kyle, Bradley Cooper (left), returns home to his wife Taya Kyle, Sienna Miller: Above.    Click on image to expand.

    Chris Kyle's wife, played by Sienna Miller, lobbied her husband to put their family first; however, for years, as Chief Kyle served 4 full tours in theaters of conflict, he put his fellow soldiers first; above Family, above Country, but not above God, for taking care of God's good children, as the proverbial 'sheep dog' would, is the highest and best duty any man could endeavor.
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Comments

( April 14th, 2015 @ 3:59 am )
 
This film has been in the news of late with some repressive college campuses refusing to show the film at their student unions, which is college tradition just before these films go to video.

One does not always know why Liberals and their indoctrinating institutions of middling learning despise the 1st Amendment, but they do.

BCN is all about the First Amendment, so we are proud to serve as a beacon of intellectual enlightenment to Liberal colleges and universities that just can't make the ethical and Constitutional grade.
( February 5th, 2015 @ 5:44 pm )
 
I just wrote the review because I believed it would be a good review to write.

It is just a fine film. I, for the the life of me, don't understand why Liberals are doing all this belly aching. Just accept the fact that they made a movie folks want to see.
( February 2nd, 2015 @ 7:52 am )
 
Here is the search of BCN on LOVE ~~~
beaufortcountynow.com
( February 2nd, 2015 @ 7:12 am )
 
"Know thyself" ~~~ is all you can do, Stan . . .
( February 2nd, 2015 @ 6:06 am )
 
When writing for the public, I don't use the words hate or love, for I am not wise enough to look into all of mankind's hearts.

I suggest you can't either.
( February 2nd, 2015 @ 6:00 am )
 
Like many of your surveys, Stan, you always get what you ask for!!!

My use of "hate" is in reference to those articles --- many times saying and showing it without coming right out and saying "I hate . . ." You will never have a study by doing a word search. The CONTEXT of the use is what is analytical, my friend. . .

Since it's February, do a word search on LOVE for us, if you please . . .
( February 1st, 2015 @ 8:24 pm )
 
I think one of the new Liberal buzz phrases should be "politics of hate". It could be coined here in BCN by Gene Scarborough.

Hey, follow the link here to the word "hate", and check who is most associated with, subscribed to.

It is you Gene. Check out the link here: beaufortcountynow.com
( February 1st, 2015 @ 6:09 pm )
 
All one has to do to view the politics of hate is to copiously read BCN and the organizations which get plenty of display here.

Since I am interested in how the politics of hate plays out, I read it often and also comment often . . .
( January 31st, 2015 @ 5:29 pm )
 
Or rather: Is it the politics of stupid for Liberals?

Being able to judge "Hate" in one's heart is a dubious thing to discern. Being able to judge that which is stupid rattling around in a Liberal's head is quantifiable.
( January 31st, 2015 @ 5:18 pm )
 
No discussion / nobody gives a crap / what's the deal with looking under rocks from liberals and comments when many have better things to do than play the politics of HATE . . .
( January 31st, 2015 @ 11:10 am )
 
You know what is funny to me are Democrat talking points.

One that is hilarious is when mush-minded Liberals start spouting or "cheering": 'Obama has killed more terrorists than any other president'.

Hey robot Liberals, Chris Kyle alone killed more terrorists than Obama ever dreamed of, and he did it like a man: He saw clearly what he killed.

Liberal talking points like this just reaffirm what I have long known: Liberals can't do simple math.



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