'American Sniper' Is Almost Too Dumb to Criticize - Almost. - By Matt Taibbi

[kpete]

Taibbi nails it as usual.

'American Sniper' Is Almost Too Dumb to Criticize

Almost.

By Matt Taibbi | January 21, 2015


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Forrest Gump pulled in over half a billion and won Best Picture. So what exactly should we have expected from American Sniper?

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The thing is, the mere act of trying to make a typically Hollywoodian one-note fairy tale set in the middle of the insane moral morass that is/was the Iraq occupation is both dumber and more arrogant than anything George Bush or even Dick Cheney ever tried.

No one expected 20 minutes of backstory about the failed WMD search, Abu Ghraib, or the myriad other American atrocities and quick-trigger bombings that helped fuel the rise of ISIL and other groups.

But to turn the Iraq war into a saccharine, almost PG-rated two-hour cinematic diversion about a killing machine with a heart of gold (is there any film theme more perfectly 2015-America than that?) who slowly, very slowly, starts to feel bad after shooting enough women and children – Gump notwithstanding, that was a hard one to see coming.


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The really dangerous part of this film is that it turns into a referendum on the character of a single soldier. It's an unwinnable argument in either direction. We end up talking about Chris Kyle and his dilemmas, and not about the Rumsfelds and Cheneys and other officials up the chain who put Kyle and his high-powered rifle on rooftops in Iraq and asked him to shoot women and children.

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Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/american-sniper-is-almost-too-dumb-to-criticize-20150121#ixzz3PYbXdQoA


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[BeyondGeography]

1. This is how America runs in place forever

Taibbi puts in words exactly why I want no part of this movie. Sniper is a context-free cash cow. Guess what that will spawn in Hollywood Land? They will do just fine without my patronage.

[merrily]

2. Used to be that, as a general matter, only one party at a time was "the" war party.

The never to end fake war on extreme fear changed that.

[Scuba]

3. War porn.

[bemildred]

4. "a killing machine with a heart of gold"

I didn't watch it, would not ever want to, but I expect Matt got it about right.

[edhopper]

5. Good read

and he makes a great point in that last graph in the post.

[spanone]

6. well, it was directed by a man who talks to a chair to insult the President

[Paladin]

7. Outstanding article. Gotta love the sideswipe at "Forrest Gump." (nt)

[Ryano42]

8. To me, American Sniper was pure fiction and fair war movie...as far as swiping at Forrest Gump...

[marmar]

9. K/R

[Bluenorthwest]

10. I have not seen it, but I have a hard time with the idea that any movie about the war could be

dumber and more arrogant than the actual waging of the war. I think Bush/Cheney outdo Clint in dumb and arrogant. It's not easy, it takes practice, but I think the actual body count makes my case.

[KingCharlemagne]

11. What better or more fitting movie could be made about a war based entirely on a pack of lies than

one whose protagonist is a psychopathic serial killer and pathological liar?

[Bluenorthwest]

15. My point is that the war itself is inherently worse than any shitty movie made about it.

A war based on a pack of lies is worse than a movie about a war based on a pack of lies. Period. If war was not waged, there would not be any films about the waging of war. It's not chicken and egg, it's mirror and nature. The fact is worse than the fiction.

[KingCharlemagne]

16. Yeah, I agree with you 1000%. This movie reminds me of the Rambo genre that came out

after we had been ignominiously ejected from Vietnam in the mid-70s. Few would argue that the exrement known as Rambo was worse than the war that spawned it.

I was snarkily trying to condemn the Iraq War and anyone still tempted to view it as a 'noble cause' (Reagan's verdict on Vietnam). The Iraq War was an evil cause, based on a pack of lies. A lot of totally innocent people are dead because of it. And a lot of American soldiers are dead because of it.

[lunasun]

12. both dumber and more arrogant than anything George Bush or even Dick Cheney ever tried.

Hey it is Clint Eastwood - he oldman rambles on to empty chairs in public and thinks it is brilliant

but I agree the sick part is the Hollywood gloss over of Kyle and Iraq
but you hear here how he was saving me from something and a hero because Iraq you know

[benld74]

13. Unfortunately this Eastwood movie is alot like his talking to the empty chair at GOP Convention

Eastwood provides the one-way storyline which is never questioned. It only leaves people their own biased interpretation.

[Jamastiene]

14. Of all the things I have read about Kyle,

the only time anything close to PTSD is mentioned is in regards to losing his fellow soldiers. I have never seen anything that said he ever started to feel bad about shooting women and children. At least, if we are talking facts, there is no evidence of that. Of course, the movie will make it out to be that he had any kind of hard time with that. He didn't. He bragged about it, tried to add to his kill count with lie after lie, called them savages and said killing them was fun.

For me, if someone is going to make a movie about a real life person, if they are not factual about the good AND the bad about that person, I have no interest in seeing it and will consider it a sham of a shit movie.

[frylock]

18. yep. the movie version of Chris Kyle is just as fabricated as the lies he told

[kwolf68]

17. That danged Liberal Hollywood at it again

Between all the religious movies that came out over the last couple years and now this bit of war porn, I wonder how long before we can just call Hollywood for what it is-i money making enterprise with no essential interest in anything other than making vast profits...YES, Liberal people can be greedy pieces of swine and money making enterprises are in business to ,,, make money.

With the media now under complete corporate control, Hollywood selling out, high education SO afraid of red witch hunts...the last few bastions of pure Liberalism are in random coffee houses in Greenwich Village and in the lyrics of some hardcore punk bands 80 people go to see.

It's over for pure Liberalism. We have no more intellectual centers.