Things NOT to say when seeing "American Sniper"

[underpants]

I have only seen the trailer for this movie but it looked like a harrowing war film and a fair treatment of the difficulties faced by the main character after coming home. I see that the right sees this movie as justification like they saw "Zero Dark Thirty" even though that movie actually was a complete refutation of torture.


For reference please see Things NOT to say when seeing 'The Passion of the Christ' from 2004.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=818212

"With a guy like this how did we lose that war?"

"Hold it, those aren't snipes he's shooting THOSE ARE PEOPLE!"

"I heard the director is some crazy old coot who talks to empty chairs"

"You should see what happens to this guy when he goes to Vegas with his friends"

"Soooo he couldn't find WMD either?"

"Yeah it was worth it. The price I paid for the ticket not what these guys went through of course not"

"Do you think he pops a cap on that childlike savage who picks up the RPG?"

"Turns out we were looking for Bin Laden in COMPLETELY the wrong country"

"Why doesn't he just shoot at the ground and get rich like Jed Clampett?"

" I feel like I am watching a dream of George Zimmerman's"

[Baitball Blogger]

1. The biggest propaganda coup is that a movie that celebrates fighting the wrong

war is up for an Oscar.

[Orrex]

2. Have you watched it? Is it a celebration?

I haven't seen it, but I concur with the OP in that it appears to be a story of the destruction of the central character, rather than as an exhortation to war.

If you've already seen it, then I defer to your assessment.

[uhnope]

8. I think it's a complex portrayal and it's arguably an anti-war film

yes I saw it

[daleanime]

10. Really?

How so?

[uhnope]

31. spoiler alert!

The first thing that happens, just about, is the main character has to kill a child--and it's his first "kill". No one in the audience felt very good about that, I don't think; it's a horror. It sets the tone for the film.

The rest of the film shows what the snipers goes through, including mental deterioration, as he goes of four tours in Iraq. This includes his brother becoming disillusioned with the war, saying it's "bullshit" if I recall.

There is almost no music during the film glorifying the violence; there is no buddy talk or personal backstories of side characters that so many war movies use to drag you in and encourage you to sympathize with the soldiers.

The sniper's friends and fellow soldiers die horribly and unceremoniously. It's a very harrowing film. The sniper emotional state deteriorates until he's crying on the phone to his wife asking to come home, and yet is later too emotionally mixed up to go straight home. He then freaks out at a backyard barbecue and almost kills a puppy!

He apparently recovers his own emotional/mental stability by helping wounded vets--and we have real scarred amputees on the screen, not sugarcoated at all.

And yet in the end the sniper is killed by another soldier suffering PTSD, so the sniper who lives by the bullet dies by the bullet.

Overall, all these things present a complex picture of a real person and real events.

The only thing that undercuts the above is that, at the end, there is a somewhat-romantic trumpet solo playing over scenes of the real sniper's memorial service. I thought that did somewhat put some icing on what was otherwise a harsh, bitter, artistic film.

[daleanime]

36. Thank you....

I'm glad to hear that it's not as one side as the TV spots make it, but I have to wonder if the target audience is going to pick this up. It looks a little subtle for the 'love it or leave it' crowd.

[underpants]

42. I kept into your spoiler alert

I haven't seen the movie only the full trailer at a movie - "The Hobbit"

That was the impression I got. It was more about the anguish as it was a rah rah movie. I made fun of Clint in the OP but I realize that movie makers want to put their stamp/angle on the story. It seemed t me that everything revolves or bounces off his wife as the stable force in the story

I do want to see it I the theatre but I thought I would have some fun with it.

[uhnope]

44. cool nt

[Orrex]

45. That can't be right

Lots of people who haven't seen it are declaring it a vile piece of jingoistic propaganda.

Surely all these non-viewers can't be wrong about a film that they refuse to watch, can they?

[JackRiddler]

62. Lots of people who have seen it...

Are declaring it a wonderful piece of jingoistic encouragement. They are amped to go kill more of them brown people. Hooray!

[2banon]

52. Thank you for summarizing, you've just changed my mind I think I will go see it after all.

thank you.

[JackRiddler]

65. Thank god someone finally told us war is hell.

Poor guy, he "has to" kill a child resisting the invasion of a foreign empire that has already destroyed his country. He has no choice!

It's important a great artist like Eastwood is here to remind us poignantly that war is hell and comes at great cost to the warrior, because otherwise we would have not noticed several thousand years worth of art in precisely this vein.

Does the film's propaganda campaign (quite apart from what I'm sure is a wonderful work) contribute to the rehabilitation of the most obviously criminal war of aggression in recent history? That's secondary to the greatness of the art! I'm sure it's the movie itself is not at all the disgusting maudlin celebration of murder and hypocrisy depicted in the commercials. Those are false advertising to work the box office, you know? Nothing wrong with that. All hail the dollar. Long as the movie allows critical minds like yours to detect/construct/fantasize a beautiful artistic context critical of war, who cares what the yahoos packing the theater think?

Tell me, how beautifully are the Iraqis humanized? I'm guessing maybe there are two spoken roles for them? That's usually how it works in this kind of highly subtle art work. From this film's most important recent predecessor in the cinema of American sociopaths engaged in imperial genocide, "Hurt Locker," we know Iraqis are only ever likely to say one of two things: "Help me, American!" (just before being blown up) and "Allahu Akhbar!!!" (just before blowing themselves up).

Here's another great movie that also teaches, among other things, that War Is Hell:

So unfair that this was ignored in the awards. I'm sure the Academy will stand tall and honor the great American sequel.

[October]

70. I saw it, and agree with you

My husband, however, was right next to me, and he was offended by the "glorification" of war and felt it was feeding into the right-wing propaganda machine.

Honestly, I saw the "parallel snipers" from the start and thought THAT was the story being told - alas, in the end, it wasn't the story, and the parallel was never brought up in the film, but that is how I personally saw it. I knew I couldn't be the only one.

There was a little audience applause at the end, which felt weird to me...

[Skittles]

60. does it explain that the war was based on lies? that we invaded for no reason?

that this guy was shooting people based on that lie? Does it clearly show that Iraq had NOTHING to do with 9/11, and that al queda had no strong presence in Iraq before we invaded?

[underpants]

25. Yes I saw the full trailer at a movie theater

I was surprised at how it didn't look rah rah and showed hints of his really struggling with what he did/went through. That's why I was doubly surprised at how (mostly on Facebook posts and some media) the right was taking this up as their own movie. I really want to see it but a theater being sold out is not a selling point to me. May wait a week or so.

[Baitball Blogger]

30. Reviews are stating that it's getting military support.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/14/bradley-cooper-responds-to-lefty-anti-war-criticism-of-american-sniper.html

[JackRiddler]

37. The movie doesn't matter. The propaganda matters.

Thousands of commercials broadcast during high-rated TV programs are sending an unsolicited message to hundreds of millions of TV viewers. Most of them will never see the movie. (This is true of mass-market films generally, of course.)

The prestige of Oscar nominations and the talk-show interviews with the actors emoting about how deeply they empathized with the pesonal traumas and struggles of the mass-murdering protagonist become part of the campaign.

The propaganda stands apart from the movie and promotes apology for a war of aggression, militarism, blind nationalism, obedience to orders ("duty&quot and Christianism.

The propaganda is a separate activity and as a rule more important than the movie. The producers and promoters know exactly at whom they are aiming as an audience and what message they are sending de facto - i.e., what message will actually be understood by the majority of recipients.

The recipients in turn are reflecting that message online, with their tweets and comments about how jacked-up they now are to go kill terrorists over there so they don't come here.

Some debatable artistic nuance that subtly criticizes the madness of war, hidden in the film's subtext and detectable only to critics looking for it, is a fart in the nationalist shitstorm that the producers and promoters of the film wittingly created. For God, country and box office.

Not to mention the detestable character presented as a hero, symbol and essence of the country itself.

[Orrex]

39. Ok, but is the movie a celebration, as claimed?

I agree with you about the propaganda, but that's external to the film in the same way that a Happy Meal toy doesn't affect the quality of the corresponding Disney movie.

Should the film not have been nominated because you and I object to the deification of the military? Couldn't the same claim then be made about any film that celebrates a historical and highly charged event or character?

[JackRiddler]

41. The point is I don't care?

The propaganda is politically important. It's everywhere. Hundreds of millions of people don't get to choose whether they see it. The movie is not important. (The Happy Meal toy is, in fact, more important than the Disney film, it is tantamount to a crime against the children it attracts to the poison of McDonald's simulated food.)

"American Sniper" looks like maudlin shite, and not something I'd ever pay to watch. The scenes in the commercials are horrible. I don't really care.

My country was led into waging an unprovoked war of aggression, the highest international crime by its own (Nuremberg) standards. Now a well-known propagandist of nationalism has made a movie, not about the crime, but to present one of the invaders as the real hero of the story. What if it's a good movie?

What if a French director made a great movie justifying the Algeria war, about a complex character who murdered a few hundred people there? What if an Islamist director made a nuanced movie about a tortured soul who murders hundreds of Israelis in Tel Aviv? Would you say the marketing of these films is a secondary question to whether they "deserve" to receive awards for well-executed direction and performances? Your concern for whether the movie receives its due as an artwork is trivial.

[Orrex]

43. I would be interested to see such films, if they were well made

[JackRiddler]

47. I hope you would also ask...

why such outrageous and evil lies are made into movies - and more importantly, propganda campaigns - that basically pave the way to the next atrocity, rather than something, anything else?

[Orrex]

48. It's probably worth asking why any film is made

I decline to be restricted in my viewing simply because someone has (often preemptively) declared a film to be vile propaganda. I would hope that such critics would respect viewers enough to let them form their own opinions, but alas this is often not the case.

[JackRiddler]

49. Poor thing.

Restricted in your viewing by people who think "American Sniper" is propaganda for war. They're out in front of the theater blocking you from paying your money to see it, how terrible!

Oh wait, they're not? I'm sorry, I'm ready to agree you deserve the victimhood you seem to need.

Again: I don't give a shit about what's in the film.

Along with the rest of the world, I have already been exposed to the propaganda campaign. No one asked me, but thanks to commercials during football, I've probably had an hour's worth of the propaganda for this movie. What is that, already one-fifth of the run time?

Politically, as with most films, the propaganda campaign is a thousand times more important than what's in the movie.

Now go! Pay! Let yourself be moved. Experience how it feels!

This is one case where I'd rather watch Hostel, or something else in the serial killer torture-porn genre. It may be artistically worthless and repellent, and it may reveling in scenes of murder, but at least it knows that it's about a mass murderer. It's not making him a hero. It's not identifying him with my country.

But wait, I think we need to plumb Ted Bundy's psychological depths! He's a really complex guy.

Or better yet, Osama Bin Ladin. We need a movie to tell us what a sad, tortured soul he was.

[Orrex]

55. Well, I can see that you have nothing to contribute.

Your inability to articulate a serious point reduces you to petty insults and and patronizing bullshit. Disappointing, but unsurprising.


It's clear that you lack the capacity to consider a work of art separate from its context or creator. Don't feel bad--that's a very common failure. You should continue to embrace it proudly, as you've done here.


Reply or don't. I don't give a shit about anything that you have to say. My only regret is that I've humored you this long.

[JackRiddler]

56. Pure projection.

Nothing read, nothing understood.

Enjoy your murder porn. I prefer mine to be fictional, and not to be paving the way to the next war. Eastwood is America's Goebbels.

[Skittles]

59. BINGO

[sabrina 1]

69. I would not nominate a propaganda movie personally, but we live in an 'Empire now' airc being told.

And Empires do that sort of thing.

If we were simply a democracy, a movie would have been made about eg, Kevin Benderman. He, eg, when ordered to shoot children, refused. There was no conflict for him, it was simply wrong.

He experienced a complete change of heart and mind after his first tour in Iraq. He had supported the invasion before going there. He was a decorated ten year military man whose father and grandfather were also military men.

He then refused to return. THAT took real courage. He wasn't alone among his troops who felt as he did, but most, which is understandable, were afraid to stand up and simply went along.

For his courage, he faced a court martial. He was more than willing to go to prison rather than return to shoot children and other innocents who, he realized, were never a threat to this country.

He faced decades in jail, which he said, he was willing to do. At least he would be able to sleep at night.

The Iraqi people learned of his plight. Many thanked him, wrote letters to him. All of which he had the courage to tell the American people about.

Most of the charges against him were dropped by the judge. He was sentenced to a few years in the brig from which he continued to speak out and to expose the treatment of US troops in our own military prisons.

His wife was a very strong principled woman who stood by him throughout this ordeal.

No movie has been made about this hero, yet. Maybe someday when America returns to what it was supposed to be, he will be honored for his bravery and his sacrifices for his country.

Until then, propaganda war movies will be nominated. They always are when propaganda is needed because the truth would end support for our disastrous wars.

This Sniper did not have the courage Benderman had when he was faced with doing something he knew was wrong. He took the easy way out.

That is no hero.

[Ash_F]

38. The story that he shot a woman with a grenade in one hand and a toddler in the other is absurd

Maybe he shot a woman and a toddler for real, oversight of the war was poor after all, but the rest certainly wasn't true. The character is portrayed in the kindest possible light, and the Iraqis are treated in the harshest.


His stories that he shot looters in New Orleans after Katrina, Two carjackers in Texas, as well as punched Jesse Ventura(a former SEAL) for denouncing the SEALS, are also all fabrications.

And those are just the lies I know about.


PS - I wonder what the real Kyle would have thought of the movie.

[Orrex]

40. Ok, but is the movie a celebration, as claimed?

I understood it to be a fictionalized biopic that takes liberties with the specifics. Its Oscar-worthiness shpuldn't be judged in terms of its historical accuracy but in terms of its quality as a film.

[JackRiddler]

57. Let's not judge Nazi propaganda films for their politics.

We should consider whether they are great works of art.

[Orrex]

64. I imagine that it's comforting to live with such a simplistic worldview

Wherein art is either acceptable and good or else it's equivalent to Nazi propaganda.

In a more nuanced world, a grown-up's world, the real world, one accepts that the spectrum is broader and more subtle than that, and it requires a fittingly more nuanced response.

I recognize that this is well beyond your capacity, and I don't fault you for it. It simply means, as stated above, that you have nothing to contribute.

At this point, you'll probably flail your arms again and accuse me of projecting, and that's fine. I'm sure that it's frustrating to watch a conversation happen while remaining wholly unable to participate in a meaningful way.


Flail away, it's all right. No one will judge you. You're among friends.

[JackRiddler]

66. Projection.

I'd say one day you may figure out that art working to justify wars of aggression and genocide can also be great art (highly unlikely in this case, based on the maudlin shite displayed in the commercials), but it's still working to justify wars of aggression and genocide. The Nazi propaganda ministry made some great movies too, you know? What if Hitler had been a great artist, wouldn't it have been unfair to judge him based merely on his real-world impact?

I know when someone is not my friend, by the way. That's important. Mass murderers and their apologists are not my friends. Also not are people so far gone they think "art" covers this up. Also not are people so rigid and trapped in faulty dichotomous thinking they think criticism of such art is equivalent to censorship.

[Ford_Prefect]

3. Exactly !!!

Its the whole "celebrate the warrior" religion in one film experience.

Bait and Switch once again. Portray the individual struggles of a soldier as noble in the greater cause without recognizing that many soldiers of that conflict have committed suicide as direct result of the genuine duplicity of the war they were sent to fight.

Sick, Sick, Sick right wing wet dream.

[Orrex]

12. You've seen it?

[Ford_Prefect]

23. I can't put into words how I feel beyond what I've said, not without getting banned here.

The reviewer below got it best IMHO.
http://www.examiner.com/review/american-sniper-review-destroying-the-hand-that-feeds

What you do once you are in a firefight has no relation what got you into it. They never asked why the war began or why so many people were dying in it. They put on their uniforms and went to kill the "ragheads".

It was the same in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, the same in Afghanistan. Is still the same in all the as yet un-named locations in Africa we are not allowed to know of or publish about.

The movie never asks how the war began nor invites you to consider that it did not need to happen in the first place. It doesn't dare ask why all those soldiers had to do the awful things that gave them terrible dreams. It only presents the war as a given, one of life's nightmares to be survived, ignoring the documented reality of Neo-Con plotting and a president's joyful duplicity.

IMHO it is one more step in the right wing deification of the warrior: a long-suffering grunt who nobly dies or keeps his buddies from dying in the process and equally noble, if terrible, and inevitable war. ***edit: I think the right wing is taking this film and using it to deify the war and those who fought in it. I don't get that from the director or the film itself. However it is easy to see how those who want it to be about the "heroic warrior" can get there.

[Orrex]

26. But that wasn't my question.

Have you seen the film? If you have, then that's all the answer that I can hope for.

But if you haven't, then what is the basis for your intrepration? Hearsay?

[Ford_Prefect]

27. Yes I saw it. Wish I had not but I wanted to see the view from the "other side".

It is a well made and deeply disturbing film.

I am not saying people should not see it. That choice is entirely up to you or them.

I am saying while it views the life of one particular man in the war in harrowing detail, it only goes so far as to ask how bad war is for those who fight it, and to some degree for those who live with them.

It avoids the larger question of the need for such a man to fight in such a war or in this particular war. The obfuscation of the root causes of the Iraq war is important. Those causes shaped the war into the terrible thing it was, and yet still is.

[Orrex]

29. Thanks. (nt)

[Red Knight]

68. That's fair

When you are in the middle of a battle you aren't asking yourself about the politics of the war itself or about the moral justification for what you're doing. You're trying to accomplish some "mission" and stay alive and keep your buddy alive while doing it. A soldiers job in general is to carry out orders and complete a mission assigned by his superior officers.

If that were not the case you could not have a functioning military.

Questioning the validity of the war itself, taking the responsibility for being there--that's for the people who made that decision in the first place, and the luxury to point fingers and be critical of everything that goes bad, of all the ugliness that is inevitable in war is for people sitting behind a computer screen who have never been in that sort of situation and can find it very easy to pick apart an event or situation or person and come to some high moral conclusion.

Wars are horrible. Being in a war is horrible. Soldiers sometimes do horrible things. Sometimes they go beyond the rules of war and even become criminals. They are just men and there are good ones and bad ones.

I did not read "American Sniper" but I did see the film.

I have no idea who Chris Kyle was beyond a movie representation of him. Obviously that's going to strip some of the truth away. I don't think the film portrayed him as a saint and it didn't portray him as a monster. And the truth probably lies somewhere in between.

I think any film that brings some attention to the toll that war takes on the young men this country sends to fight is a good thing.

While "American Sniper" doesn't show any sympathy toward the Iraqis(because the ones in the film are mostly combatants)it does not exactly pretend that this is all some glorious moment. While Chris Kyle may not have had a lot of doubt about the war, other characters did.

I would have liked to see more about the toll war takes on family. That never seems to get enough attention but the film at least addressed some of that.

I wasn't looking to see how closely this film followed Kyle's life. I was looking at more of an overall picture.

I think it did pretty well, while trying to preserve who Chris Kyle(love him or hate him) was as a person.

[ND-Dem]

33. +100. Bait & switch indeed.

[zeemike]

5. No kidding it is?

I don't pay much attention to Hollywood these days...about as much as I do the MSM because there is not much difference between them.

[MFM008]

28. won't win

and Clint Eastwood was snubbed.

[ND-Dem]

34. Glad he was snubbed.

[JackRiddler]

67. It will be close.

Oscar's on a rotation. One year of up-our-bunghole self-congratulation ("The Artist&quot , one year of social critique ("12 Years A Slave&quot . Now we're rolling back to patriotic apology, like with the equally odious "Hurt Locker." They're still bootlicking on the right to make up for that one prize to Michael Moore.

[2banon]

50. My thoughts EXACTLY

I'm so not seeing this film, I will not be watching the Oscars. rarely do anyway.

[yeoman6987]

61. It's stunning that it made 103 million over the 4-day holiday

Never has a movie done that before in January. I thought the movie was ok. The ending was emotional and the audience left very quiet. The experience of the movie was interesting. California was the state that had the highest attended movie goers which surprised me. Anyway, in three weeks, it will be out of the news especially after the Oscars.

[FairWinds]

4. Probably also don't want to say . .

Guns Are For Cowards !!
OR, . . .
Join Veterans For Peace !!

[KingCharlemagne]

6. Or Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW.org) - nt

[Go Vols]

7. I said two of the things you mention

but I was at the drive-in.

[project_bluebook]

11. Its kind of like the movie The Green Berets during the hight of the Vietnam war

John Wayne was one of the directors and main actors. It was one of the better propaganda films of the era. No WMD's, just lots of commies in black pajamas.

[muntrv]

9. Don't also mention Clint was against going into Iraq.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/clint-eastwood-i-was-going-754761

[ND-Dem]

35. so he says now. any evidence of it from the period?

[Dreamer Tatum]

13. Things TO say: "I'm an adult. It's just a movie. It's no big deal." nt

[AlbertCat]

18. How about....

"Is Bradley gonna take his shirt off?"


It's a genre.... y'know, the war film....

I find it amusing what the right apparently sees in it... not digging past the surface as usual. Y'know like when they use songs like "Fortunate Son" or "Losing my Religion" to make some point but obviously never got past the songs' titles.

Of course there may not be much past the surface... I haven't seen it.

[HappyMe]

20. Yeah, there is that.

[tclambert]

14. I read Kyle's book, and from the movie trailer it looks like they give him a lot more anguish

and regret than he admitted to in the book. From the book, he seemed remarkably unreflective and unconflicted. He satisfied himself early on that he was saving more lives than he took, saving the lives of American servicemen, often his close friends. After that, he spent almost no time soul-searching, debating the rights and wrongs of his situation. He just did his job as competently as he could.

He didn't question the reasons for the war. Someone higher up the chain of command ordered his team out on missions, and he did his best to keep his team members alive. He didn't have any interest in deeper philosophical issues.

[11 Bravo]

15. Don't forget "Allahu Akbar!" Based on the film's ...

intended audience, I suspect that would not be well-received.

[olddots]

16. bad publicity is good publicity

life is not a movie but you would never know it after 100 years of cinematic " magic " .

[Ed Suspicious]

17. "Why doesn't he just shoot at the ground and get rich like Jed Clampett?"

This one gold . . . black gold.

[lovemydog]

19. First thing you know ole Jed's a millionaire

Kin-folk said 'Jed move away from there!'

[BumRushDaShow]

21. And he was just shootin' for some food.

[lovemydog]

22. 'n up from the ground comes a bubblin' crude

[BumRushDaShow]

24. Oil that is. Black gold. Texas tea

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

32. Or this...

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy? Gandhi

[miyazaki]

46. Is this the sequal to "American Psycho"? n/t

[JackRiddler]

51. Sadly not.

That was a great movie. Kind of made everything since about psycho-killers and Wall Street sociopaths redundant, don't you think? Instead of "Wolf of Wall Street," they should have just brought it back for a heavily promoted theater run. Also, it was the perfect role for Christian Bale, as it turns out.

[madinmaryland]

53. "Soooo he couldn't find WMD either?" nuff said.

[Tom Ripley]

54. "I give this movie 5 Lee Harveys!"

[Lint Head]

58. I will not see another movie made by an actor who

supports a party who picked a murderer as a candidate then has the Supreme Cowards install him as President.

[U4ikLefty]

63. LOL at the Zimmerman comment. nt