Chris Kyle was considered one of the deadliest snipers in American history, with 160 confirmed kills to his name. His memoir, American Sniper , detailed his four tours as a Navy SEAL during the Iraq War as well as a life back home, where his heroism continued (though anecdotes including everything from taking down carjackers to punching Jesse Ventura were oft-disputed). Whatever people believed, Kyle forged his own myth around a core of truth. He survived war. He saw it all. Somehow, none of that valor, dramatic intrigue, or moral complication seeps into Clint Eastwood's American Sniper, a stale adaptation with a lead performer struggling to dig deep.

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Bradley Cooper looks the part. Packing on the muscle, growing out Kyle's frontiersman beard, and adding a Texas twang to his speech, Cooper's removes himself from lingering Hangover history to become the cowboy-turned-SEAL (literally: Kyle starts his career riding bulls only to give it up in favor of his country). Cooper's version of Kyle is a keen observer on and off the battlefield. Sniping demands split decisions. So does wooing the ladies or grappling with PTSD, two diametric hurdles Kyle jumps during his service years. Under the brim of a cap, Cooper's eyes constantly survey the scene, looking for solutions, even in his own home.American Sniper is at its most riveting when Eastwood locks eyes with his star. The opening sequence of the film, Kyle deciding whether or not to take down a pre-teen Iraqi boy taking a grenade from his mother, is front and center of all the trailers for a reason. It's all the horrors of sniping stuffed into a suffocating frame. Through the scope, Cooper's enlarged eye comes face to face with the boy. That memory will stay with him forever.Eastwood runs into trouble when Kyle's tours become monotonous. In pursuit the Butcher of Fallujah (Mido Hamada), the Navy SEAL takes out insurgent after insurgent — gunmen hiding in trees, suicide bombers driving cars, young men and women who choose to attack. He's not phased, which is probably accurate. But it's not engaging or cinematic. To counter, Eastwood and his writer Jason Hall pit Kyle against Mustafa (Sammy Sheik), an Iraqi soldier characterized as a kind of mega-sniper (and likely informed by the viral persona dubbed “Juba”).The conflict feels too complex for such black-and-white “bad guys,” yet it's all Eastwood seems to know what to do with Kyle, eventually lifting him off his sniper post and into more Lone Survivor-like firefights. If it's accurate, it doesn't fit with Cooper's meditative, introspective take on the character. Kyle becomes an action hero — and in an action movie that doesn't have much oomph, thanks to Eastwood's cut-and-dry style. When a dust storm envelops one of the film's major shootouts, the visually striking scene dives on the narrative like a pile on scrambling for a fumble.American Sniper jumps back and forth between Kyle's stints in the trenches and stretches of normalcy back at home. Before serving his first tour, the SEAL settles down with Taya (Sienna Miller). The call of duty hangs in the wings (Kyle learns of his first tour on their wedding day) and, for awhile, they make it work. Miller is vivacious in early scenes, a sensitive, but no-BS compliment to Cooper's brutish teddy bear.Those characterizations dissolve when American Sniper grapples with the amorphous post-traumatic stress. What Kyle brings home from war doesn't feel specific or nuanced. There's pent up anger and fear. Taya lashes out looking for answers, reminding him they have a kid, then two, to worry about. If there's such a thing as sterile PTSD, Eastwood unearths it. The movie takes too much pride in its subject's patriotic actions to pierce his disrupted mental state. The script flirts with some fascinating encounters — when a fellow vet (Jonathan Groff) recognizes Kyle at an auto body shop, the SEAL can barely make eye contact — but passes by insight.American Sniper never decides what it's about, besides reminding people of a great American hero, a proclamation that needs a case behind it. When it ends, it leaves Kyle's most fascinating turns to cheap title cards (and for spoiler purposes, we'll leave that discovery up to you).