Let me start off this review by saying that I am in no way the testosterone-fueled, ultra-American male that will flock to the theaters to see this film. I’m not saying that to make myself sound awesome or unique, I’m just saying that to provide some context about the scope from which I will be looking at this film. If you’re confused about what I mean by “testosterone-fueled, ultra-American male”, I will try to better define it for you. I’m talking about the type of dude who would get the lyrics to a Florida-Georgia line song tattooed on his back so he could put it on full display when he goes to the Six Flags water park once every three summers. I’m talking about the type of person who set their Dumb and Dumber DVD on fire after hearing Jeff Daniel’s rant from the first episode of the Newsroom. Lastly, I’m talking about the type of person who loves America so much that they can’t have an adult conversation about the issues this country faces without freaking the fuck out and pulling up a tweet from the Cloyd Rivers Twitter account to defend themselves.

With all that being said, I truly believe that America is the greatest country in the world and our troops are real life heroes. Do this country and its people have their shortcomings? Yes. Is there any place on the globe that I would rather live? No. So why did I feel the need to mention all the shit that I did in the first paragraph? I did that solely to attempt to put into words the types of reservations I went into seeing this film with. This film has received amazing reviews, had a $100 million opening weekend and oh yeah, six fucking Oscar nominations including Best Picture and Best Actor. Could it really be this amazing?! OR… was it just a bunch of hype generated from the type of people mentioned earlier who heard the two words “American” and “Sniper” in the same title and decided it must be the greatest film ever. Well, on Monday night I decided it was time to fight through the crowds and brave the cold winter weather to see this film. I made my best effort to forget all my preconceived notions and form an honest and objective opinion. I’m not going to provide a complete summary of this film. I’m going to hit some key points and talk about what I liked and didn’t like. If you haven’t seen it yet I suggest you do that before reading this.

The first part of the film shows us a small glimpse of Chris Kyle’s (Bradley Cooper) life before he joins the NAVY Seals. We see him as a child and then again as a man in his mid-20s whose only aspiration in life is to become a rodeo cowboy. Then, Kyle is watching TV and sees breaking news about the U.S. Embassy bombings of 1998. Kyle throws away his cowboy dreams to join the military and, in the next scene, we see Kyle at a recruiter’s office. Fast forward to boot camp where we see Kyle going through the ringer while officers shout degrading (kind of funny?) things at the trainees. The aforementioned degrading remarks along with a few other moments throughout will fuel all the people who are going to tell you that this film is “funny, too!”

During boot camped we are introduced to Kyle’s future wife, Taya (Sienna Miller). Herein lies one of my bigger issues with this film. I think Eastwood does a poor job of developing this character. When we first meet her at a packed bar she is prickly and relatively unlikable. Kyle is persistent though and eventually wins her over. Miller’s character is pretty cold prior to their marriage which becomes problematic later in the moments that are supposed to pull at your heartstrings during his tours in the Middle East. It is conflicting because Taya goes from an extremely cold character to one that demands sympathy later in the film. I just don’t feel like the audience generally sympathizes with her due to her underdevelopment earlier in the film. When Kyle returns home from his tours she is understandably not understanding of his situation. However, she goes about dealing with this by shaming him for not knowing how to properly address his emotions. Again she becomes unlikable and hard to side with which creates an unbalanced relationship. If done properly, most of the audience would understand how torn up she is when he returns to duty and leaves behind her and their children. I think most of the audience understands this through the device of putting ourselves in her shoes but I think if her character had been stronger then less work would have been required from the audience. And while we may learn to sympathize with her through our own efforts, we still are on Kyle’s side 100% of the time. But that makes sense right? Kyle is our guy! I’m just saying that some of the emotional moments would’ve been more effective if they had been approached with as much care as the battle scenes were.

So now let’s go back a step or two and talk about Kyle being our guy. He is our guy right? YES HE’S OUR FUCKING GUY. I think this is because of two different reasons. Reason one is that Bradley Cooper gives maybe the performance of his career thus far. The dude is on quite the run right now and he has transitioned from a marginally funny dude from Wedding Crashers and the Hangover trilogy to a Best Actor nominee. Cooper brought the character of Chris Kyle to life. I’ve read multiple reports that Kyle’s family and other soldiers he fought with are extremely pleased with the way Cooper played his character. Cooper’s performance carries this film and keeps us entertained the whole time despite some flaws. So what is the second reason we root for Kyle throughout this film?

Most screenplays spend 10-15 pages providing enough backstory on the protagonist to give the audience some rooting interest in the character. Do we root for Kyle because we see him shoot a deer as a little kid? I don’t think so. Do we root for Kyle because he lasts 12 seconds on a bull at the rodeo then proceeds to go home, find his girlfriend cheating on him and kicks her out? Not this either. So why the F do we just inherently root for this dude? I believe the answer is simple but the way we arrive to it is a little bit more complex. Simply put, we root for Kyle because he is an American. He’s not just an American — he is the best kind of American. He is all the ideals of this country mixed into one. He sees the U.S. Embassy attacks on the news and zips over to the recruiters office the next day to sign himself up to serve. I think that a lot of us admire him for that action, and that is what provides us with a vested interest throughout the film. See I have this theory that a lot of people (myself included) make this sort of deal with themselves at some point in their lives. I think this deal is sort of an agreement with yourself that if some shit ever went down where our country was really in danger that we would join the military and defend our country. Well guess what, some shit really has went down, multiple times, and most of us are still sitting on our asses. If you’re not, I salute you. But for those of us who are, we know that we will probably never make good on this deal, so we root for Kyle because we see a braver, more admirable version of ourselves in him. We see a guy who is truly dedicated to serving this country and protecting his brothers. He’s not perfect, but he’s just a little bit better than us, and that is something to strive for.

The past couple things I’ve hit on were my main takeaways from the film. The battle scenes are very well done and probably Eastwood’s best part of the film. The men Kyle fights with suffer from the same underdevelopment as his wife’s character but are effective enough in their efforts to underline the brotherhood and friendship soldiers share with one another. I didn’t find this film to be propaganda or overly celebratory of American soldiers. It simply told Kyle’s story as he told it in his book. This film is worth the watch. I don’t think it is worthy of an Oscar, but it is worth the price of admission.

With most things I experience (especially films), I always try to take something away from them. So what can I take away from American Sniper? I can’t just join the NAVY tomorrow and start racking up confirmed kills. But to think that you have to do something that extreme to prove that you’ve learned something from this film would be completely missing the point. We can’t all be Chris Kyle. No seriously, the dude is the greatest sniper in military history. I shouldn’t even have said “we can’t all be” I should’ve said “none of us can be”. However, we could try to take away some of the pride he felt in his doing his job. We could try to take away the love he has for his country. We could try to take away the responsibility he felt for the people he worked alongside with. If we can apply even one of these lessons to our everyday lives then I think this film has served its purpose.