The first Morning Jolt of the week looks at President Obama’s fantasy-land budget proposal, the worst ad in Super Bowl history, the worst play call in Super Bowl history… and then these thoughts on American Sniper, which has now made nearly $250 million in American theaters and is clearly one of the most-discussed films in recent memory.
To the readers who haven’t seen it yet, yes, it is every bit as powerful as viewers have said.
After finally watching the much-discussed movie, I can conclude the movie’s critics on the Left are even more moronic than I thought. The movie is very pro-soldier, but it’s not “pro-war,” or certainly not unambiguously pro-war. About 7,000 U.S. soldiers lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, and tens of thousands more wounded; each one a son or daughter, a brother or sister, a friend, a father or mother. The human cost of these wars has been enormous, and it’s quite easy to look at the messes of Iraq – currently struggling against ISIS – and fractured, mismanaged Afghanistan and conclude America has paid far too high a price in these battles.
Again, I’m not sure how you could claim the film is pro-war propaganda when at least two of Kyle’s fellow soldiers doubt their efforts are making a difference.
I think what drives lefties bonkers is that this is a big film about Iraq where the terms “weapons of mass destruction,” “neocons”, “oil”, “Cheney”, “lied us into war” “imperialism” etc. never appear. By the time Chris Kyle arrives in Iraq, the mission is clear: Find and eliminate al-Qaeda in Iraq and any Iraqis helping them. The cruelty of Abu Zarqawi and his followers is vividly depicted. Whatever one thinks of the U.S. presence in Iraq, the warring factions of bloodthirsty thugs – all too real — represent a much worse future for the country than America’s aims. However the U.S. got into war, and no matter how complicated the effort of a unified, stable post-Saddam Iraq is, the task at hand for the U.S. at that moment is obvious: put the local brutes out of business or six feet under.
The film takes some liberties – Slate compares the movie’s events to Kyle’s autobiography — but the overwhelming audience reaction is undoubtedly a response to the film’s emotional authenticity, its ability to make us feel what its protagonists feel for two hours or so in a darkened theater. And even if the sequence of events is out of order or simplified for screen time, the emotions – the fear, the determination, the pain of separation, the sense of brotherhood – ring true, and give civilians an all-too-rare extended look of the lives of our soldiers.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=99k3u9ay1gs%3Frel%3D0