Clint Eastwood’s ‘American Sniper’ Earns Millions and Divides America

The most popular film of this year in the U.S. is causing the biggest disputes in years. Is Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper,” nominated for Oscars in six categories, a portrait of a psychopath or a hero?

American conservatives are happy. There it is: a movie about the war in Iraq that we don’t need to be ashamed of. The left rolls out the heaviest cannons, calls the movie “racist” and “reactionary,” and the public, especially from conservative states, shows its disapproval

The 84-year-old cinema veteran, actor, producer and director Clint Eastwood is responsible for this patriotic outburst. It’s interesting because you cannot easily pigeonhole him politically. The former Dirty Harry, who encouraged thugs with a 44 magnum caliber to “make his day,” until now has been an icon of self-control and justice to his fans – he, in fact, favors controlling access to guns. Despite talking at the National Republican Convention (Mitt Romney still kicks himself because of Eastwood’s performance with a chair during his most recent presidential campaign, which was a disaster), he has also supported Democrats, especially pro-environment ones.

Above all, he criticized the intervention in Iraq before it even became fashionable. However, the chief of the Veterans Association called “American Sniper” the best movie about Iraq, if not “the single best work of film about the Iraq War ever made.”

160 Confirmed Hits

In one scene in the film, Chris Kyle (played by the incredible Bradley Cooper) returns with his wife from his colleague’s funeral, who died in combat. His crying mother above the coffin reads a letter from her son; the boy, it turns out, had a crisis of faith regarding the meaning of war. Taya (Sienna Miller) asks her husband what he thinks about it. He is silent for a while and, after, explodes: It was not the bullet that killed him, but that letter.

The real Chris, the most efficient sniper in the history of the U.S. Army — having shot 160 people, and these only the so-called verified hits — was not afflicted by the demons of war. I interviewed him when he was promoting his autobiography in Poland. He spoke with a heavy Texan accent, starting his replies with “Yes, ma’am” or “No, ma’am,” and rarely needing to think more deeply. I asked him if any of his memories kept him awake at night. He replied, “I regret only not being able to save more of our boys. But regarding those I killed, I don’t regret even one shot.”*

His memoir is not demanding literature; it is literary on the level of ”Call of Duty” fan fiction, but with the stamp of true history. I read it with a mixture of fascination and dread, because Kyle (and two ghostwriters) demonstrated on every page a lack of reflection verging on parody. He called the Iraqis “savages” and “bandits.” With conviction he declared that “each person he shot was bad,” and that “the world is a better place without savages murdering Americans.”*

“Yes,” he said. “I liked my job, because I realized that each time I killed somebody, I saved the lives of American soldiers, our allies and civilians. Of course, I would prefer to be known for the number of people I saved than those I killed, but this cannot be counted.”*

War Sells

Costing $59 million, “American Sniper” earned $200 million dollars in the U.S. just two weekends after the premier. The most profitable war movie of all time – Spielberg’s 1998 “Saving Private Ryan” — earned $216.5 million in the same amount of time. Besides, it was Steven Spielberg who was supposed to direct “American Sniper.”

Four out of its seven rivals at the Oscars – “Birdman,” “The Theory of Everything,” “Boyhood” and “Whiplash” – all together earned less then “American Sniper.”

Even a favorite job can get boring, so the soldiers invented creative ways of getting rid of the enemy, which Kyle describes without embarrassment. “After some time you start to burn out. You shoot all the time and you need some change to be able to focus on your job. And you need laughter,”* he said during the interview.

Sheep, Wolves and Dogs

The publicist of The Guardian was outraged that Eastwood glorified a human who “took pleasure in dehumanizing and killing brown people.”

But it is society that firstly, and at a very high cost, trains such a killing machine to dehumanize the enemy and afterwards. sends it to do what it was trained for. Chris is a soldier: He does not question the aim of the war in Iraq or its methods. Yet neither does the director.

“You have to embrace his philosophy if you’re going to tell a story about him,” explained Eastwood. So he accepted it: Other laws don’t exist on the screen. Little Chris hears his father say that people are divided into types: sheep, wolves and, gifted with “aggression,” sheepdogs who protect the vulnerable from predators. It’s clear that he will be such a dog — maybe a simple, brutal one, but with noble intentions.

The film shows the occupation of Iraq as a justified reply to the World Trade Center attack. Chris doesn’t shoot insurgents defending themselves from the aggression of a foreign country, but Iraqi al-Qaida forces that torture children and kill his colleagues out of hatred for American values. Everything is black or white. America is good, its enemies are bad and the bad ones can be — even should be — killed. Simple.

Unworthy to Clean His Shoes

Not for everyone. The critics don’t like the movie’s one-sidedness. Documentary maker and loyal leftist of America Michael Moore said on Twitter that snipers are cowards and there is no point in glorifying them. Actor Seth Rogan added that “American Sniper” reminds him of the work of Goebbles, shown in cinemas at the end of Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” – it was Nazi propaganda about a sniper in Wermacht.

The other side hits back. Sarah Palin, the would-be U.S. president, famous for her fondness of shooting, said to the “Hollywood leftists: While caressing shiny plastic trophies you exchange among one another while spitting on the graves of freedom fighters who allow you to do what you do, just realize the rest of America knows you’re not fit to shine Chris Kyle’s combat boots.”

And former Republican leader in Congress Newt Gingrich advised Michael Moore to spend a couple of weeks with the Islamic State group and Boko Haram so he can appreciate “our defenders.”

It’s Good to Be Patriotic

Polemics don’t stop the accountants from cashing in on their gains. Americans, especially those who believe in God, the motherland and the right to own a gun, are tired of beating their breasts. As popular film website The Wrap writes, “American Sniper” gave cinema fans a “real hero,” who served the country and fought in a just war. It’s high time, because how long can we pick on American soldiers?

America again wants to feel proud of its courageous boys. Such movies about the Middle East as “Green Zone,” “In the Valley of Elah” and “Lions for Lambs” showed the nonsense of war and its costs. They were not popular in the box office. However, last year’s “Saved” (four commandos in the Afghanistan mountains) earned $150 million. “Unbroken,” a true story about American heroism during World War II, earned $112 million. “American Sniper” can expect even $350 million. Is this the beginning of the patriotic wave in Hollywood? Maybe. Because patriotism definitely pays.

The Prestige of the Uniform

Eastwood himself says that “American Sniper” is an apolitical and even antiwar film, because it shows the problems of the soldiers’ families and returning to civilian life as veterans. However, the director is quite solitary in his opinion.

“American Sniper” is not a primitive show-off, and the army has nothing against a movie that shows the unpopular intervention in Iraq in a better light – by using the image of the bearded Bradley Cooper. The Pentagon provides the people making the movies with location and extras, as long as the general headquarters accepts the screenplay.

Tony Scott, when making “Top Gun” with young Tom Cruise as an insubordinate pilot, had the complete support of the Air Force. “Zero Dark Thirty,” which justified torture, according to critics, had consultants from the CIA. On the other hand, Oliver Stone, when making antiwar “Platoon,” was on his own. And although love of the motherland as the kind shown in the film ”The Green Berets” that tries to convince us that war in Vietnam was right is a thing of the past, and “American Sniper” actually deals with the subject of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), ultimately it is a film about an American hero. About a sheepdog defending the sheep.

Every year when the Academy announces Oscar nominees, satirists change the posters of the nominated movies into “fair” versions. And so, for example, “The Grand Budapest Hotel” became “Hipsteric Ibis” and “The Theory of Everything” – about paralyzed physicist Stephen Hawking – ”Demanding History of Disability.” “American Sniper” received the title “Army Recruitment Movie.”

*Editor’s Note: The original quotations, accurately translated, could not be verified.