Things NOT to say when seeing "American Sniper"

[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.