Film Review: American Sniper

Watching American Sniper as a British viewer, someone whose idea of patriotism is watching England fail to win the World Cup every four years, can be an uncomfortable experience. Every awkwardly patriotic diatribe uttered by Bradley Cooper's Chris Kyle (and I counted at least three) is made extremely po-faced and with not a hint of humour. Is director Clint Eastwood condoning or condemning such unthinking nationalistic pride? Is Chris Kyle here portrayed as a naive but well-meaning patriot or is he a foolish gung-ho nationalist?

This lack of clarity as to the central theme of the movie is infused into its very structure. The film is centred around Kyle's four tours of duty, each one involving exciting action sequences and tense encounters. At the end of each tour Kyle returns home and is plainly suffering from PTSD, struggling to communicate this to his wife as he has been raised in an environment which does not allow displays of masculine emotion. He is emotionally repressed, and oppressed by patriarchal strictures about how men should behave. These are the most fascinating and most successful elements of the film, and Cooper does an admirable job in the role, communicating in a quiet, grunty Texan drawl. However, each time the movie begins to explore Kyle’s troubled psyche, it drags us back to the tedious Iraq-set action sequences and makes us watch Kyle and his fellow US soldiers revel in killing “savages”, as they are referred to frequently throughout the movie. This formulaic structure not only confuses the message of the film, but it also slows pacing down to a crawl as the predictability of the narrative becomes clear to the viewer.

Rather than focus on Kyle’s psychological torment and troubling relationship with war, the film creates a couple of frankly preposterous and largely fictional villains for him to fight -  the sniper Mustafa (a Syrian Olympian inexplicably fighting in the Iraqi insurgency) and the dreaded "Butcher", a silly horror movie reject who rips off limbs with an electric drill. This could have been an interesting way to create a dark reflection of Kyle’s life and therefore create a clearer picture of his psyche and motivations. But Eastwood and screenwriter Jason Hall don’t bring any such nuance to the story. The reason for these creations is far simpler; without them, Kyle's adventures in the Middle East would seem pointless and futile. By creating Kyle’s nemeses Eastwood is able to show Kyle as a true hero and give him a reason to keep fighting. Take them out of the picture, and he is just like any other soldier, futilely fighting and dying on the sands of Fallujah.
 

American Sniper is plainly trying to be more than just a war movie - it wants to give us some insight into a man who dedicated his life to fighting overseas for his country. But by propagating an overly simplistic portrayal of war as both necessary and exciting, as well as feeding into existing narratives of “good vs evil” or “us vs them”, it tells us very little. Nothing is resolved or learned by the end of the film, and Kyle’s tragic murder at the hands of a PTSD-suffering veteran he was trying to help is glossed over with a simple on-screen intertitle. Frankly, he deserved better.   

Film Review - Sound Of My Voice

Sound of My Voice is a slightly malfunctioning jack-in-the-box. Instead of having the tension crank up over time and then release in a satisfying conclusion, it ratchets up the tension but then fizzles away, leaving a little too much of its plot dangling on a thread. Nevertheless, this is a taut and well-crafted 85 minute drama/thriller with some excellent performances and a fascinating premise, and it is well worth your time.

This the second feature from the creative team of ‘Brit Marling and her friends’, this time with Zal Batmanglij in the director’s chair. The first was ‘Another Earth’, which made a bit more of a storm at Sundance in 2011 than this effort, although I do not think it is necessarily the superior film. Both have big ideas and both end ambiguously, but ‘Sound of my Voice’ is a tenser, more tightly constructed film which benefits from its slightly lower ambitions.

Lorna and Peter are investigative journalists who join a cult in order to create a documentary film and expose the cult’s leader, Maggie, as a fraud. However, as the film progresses they become more and more spellbound by Maggie, who claims to be from the future. She has little evidence to support her claims, but her soft, husky voice, prom queen looks and an air of mystery all combine to make her a compelling siren capable of snaring even the sceptical journalists and, by the end, perhaps the audience as well. 

Maggie, played by Brit Marling, is a wonderfully fascinating jigsaw of a character, who we learn enough about to begin piecing together her journey in our minds, but not enough about to be able to definitely say who she is or where she came from. While both Rhoda (in ‘Another Earth’, also played by Marling) and Maggie are similar in that they are lost souls, Maggie is the far more interesting character. Like any great leader, she has a powerful presence and the uncanny ability to override our intelligence and logical thinking with pure emotion. Crucially, Peter and Lorna’s constant battle between their sceptical, logical thinking and the magnetic and alluring Maggie is totally believable and is a battle being played out as much in our minds as theirs.

The vagueness and ambiguity of Maggie’s character unfortunately also extends into the plot, with several plot points left dangling. The audience discovers, at one point, that Lorna is an excellent shot, but she never gets to utilise her ability, in clear (and literal) breach of Chekhov’s famous principle that every element in a narrative serve a purpose. These abandoned plot threads may have been left open for a sequel, which is almost unforgiveable even for a major blockbuster, let alone for an indie movie with absolutely no guarantee of being successful. The other explanation may be the film’s low budget, which also benefits the film and helps to create its claustrophobic and documentary-style atmosphere.

Summary: Sound of My Voice is a clever little thriller which, with a little more fine tuning, could have been great. It leaves a little too much dangling to be entirely satisfying, but its ideas linger in the mind.

Bechdel Test: Passed