American Sniper: Wartime blues

American Sniper
Staring: Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller
Rated: 7/10
Bradley Cooper has an Oscar nomination for this one but the film is not exactly no about him but the fallout of the relentless Iraq war on US Marines and their families. This film too has been inspired by a true story so when the credit starts rolling at the end, you are left alone to think the inevitable — why war when it kills, and how?
As an American sniper, Cooper is a legend with 162 terrorist heads adorning his uniform — all killed with precision and in cold blood in the name of the nation — and these casualties include women and children trying to harm the forces in some unnamed city of Iraq.
The film is not about war either but how it alters the psyche of its dramatis personae, Cooper being the central figure of that subtle but devastating alteration of the mind, body and soul. As his friends fall to a wily Iraqi sniper who was once an Olympic athlete, Cooper gets compelled to go back again and again into the war zone on his trail. His family, children, wife — everyone grows up without him but he has no cure for his compulsion.
Cooper does a great job portraying these good and bad elements that have crept up in his otherwise simple, loving mind and by the end of it all, you feel for him, despite him. Though the movie does not tell you to, it does a good job of secretly persuading you to question America’s presence in Iraq.
That’s the beauty of the movie and the way if deals with war. To be subtle in war zone is an art and this one is exactly that and much more.

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 18 January, 2015

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