While sitting in and listening to the lectures and the discussion revolving the film American Sniper, I had a few thought that I failed to share with the class. Since the topic closely relates to the paper I’m working on, and I’m interested in receiving some new ideas, I’m sharing them now.

Overall, there is a generally cynical view of Clint Eastwood and his film the American Sniper, this is not without reason. The movie was an oversimplification of the nature of the War in Iraq, and on the surface, it depicts the war as simply good versus evil. The problem then is obvious, and natural conclusion would be reached is that Clint Eastwood is simply another filmmaker looking to profit from the war film genre and cares little to none about the film’s implication and the real story behind the war. On the surface, this seems like a perfectly good verdict on the movie and its narrative, but I believe it actually does a disservice to Eastwood’s intention and to what the public reception to the film tells us.

In my understanding, Clint Eastwood was, in fact, attempting to construct an anti-war narrative with the movie. Eastwood’s Chris Kyle represents the US war effort in Iraq is a very intriguing way, and there are many parallels that can be seen throughout the movie. First, he joins the marine mainly as a response to the bombing of the US embassies overseas, but his personal life is also a catalyst for his decision. The first 10 minutes of the movie portrayed him as an average Texan cowboy, but a turning point came when he discovered his wife’s cheating. This is important since the Iraq War have been heavily criticized as an irrational and a heat of the moment decision. Then during his campaign in Iraq, the overall war effort was eventually concentrated on one man only, Mustafa, who killed one and fatally injured another of Kyle’s teammate. The war suddenly became a mission of anger and vengeance. Here we can see another parallel between Chris Kyle and the US war effort in Iraq, that in a war started out of irrationality and declared on a virtually unfightable enemy, an individual target was singled out to become the receiver of all the anger and revenge they had to offer. To even further clarify his position, in the movie, Eastwood had multiple instances of others near Chris Kyle questioning the fundamental purposes of the war, including his wife, his brother, and one of his teammate. In the face of these questions, Chris Kyle’s vision was not blurred for a bit and simply dismissed them as lost or unable to understand. By doing this, Eastwood also draws the question to the US effort itself, fundamentally doubting its very purposes and intentions.

This aspect of the movie went unnoticed by almost everyone, and for a good reason. The movie itself is a product of entertainment, it wasn’t meant to be closely analyzed, it was supposed to be shown once, and evoke emotions. As a result, due to the movie’s simplistic portrayal of the war and its flashy images, some messages were unavoidably lost in transmission, and Clint Eastwood is to be blamed for it. By failing to recognize the genre he is working with, his attempts in an anti-war narrative turned into a fuel that furthered the racism and hatred that is already brewing within the US, and ultimately served the opposite of his intentions