One Sentence: This should have only been an action movie.
Rated: R
Nudity: None
After Credits: None
American Sniper was announced as one of the nominees for Best Picture this morning by The Academy Of Motion Picture and Sciences. So I guess this review is going to disagree with them a little bit. This does feel like one of those movies that everyone loves for the sake of not wanting to say they didn’t love it in the presence of others. It is quite the Red, White and Blue movie.
I thought this movie was a good movie. The action and war scenes were well shot, and very scary and real. Bradley Cooper in these scenes and as this character dealing with the PTSD through 4 tours to the Middle East, was excellent. However the home life scenes were short, and an aside to the war scenes. I feel like they really left out some important points about the struggle of war, and how it affects families and the men and women who served. It implies that suddenly you will be fixed, with a single talk to a doctor. This is where my problem lies. It should have been left out, or dealt with more thoroughly. It makes it feel like his struggle in the real world, wasn’t a struggle at all, just a small bump in the road, that he recovered from quickly. Which I think is a disservice to all those who suffer with this today.
So we get these short scenes at home and with the family that are glances of a harder life than those at War. They are brushed by and the main focus is war and sniping and his tours. I think it would of been a stronger movie if this was balanced out or left out completely. So because of those reasons it is not getting an amazing review from me. It was a good movie, it was well done, but not of of the best of the year.
