But in the middle is exactly where it lies: politically, thematically, and in terms of quality. Aesthetically and narratively, American Sniper is a decidedly ordinary film, hardly one of Eastwood’s best. The screenplay by actor-turned-writer Jason Hall (Paranoia) doesn’t have much shape as it simply moves from one incident to the next, and many scenes feel clipped, as if Eastwood was anxious to get to the next thing. There are moments that need a few extra beats for maximum impact, and instead we’re constantly rushed to the next sequence. The film’s final half hour, which deals with how soldiers carry the war home with them, feels especially rushed and lacking in depth, which is lethal at a point when the film needs it most.

American Sniper doesn’t do anything that other war films haven’t already done much better, and while its Iraq War setting gives it currency, its general refusal to deal with any issues outside the soldiers’ immediate experience on the ground and at home nullifies any larger potential. Of course, there have been great war films that didn’t deal directly with the politics of war itself—Kathryn Bigelow’s still-jarring The Hurt Locker (2009), for one—but those films succeeded because their depiction of war was so powerful and the central characters were so compelling. American Sniper has moments that approach greatness, including the opening sequence in which the main character is faced with the agonizing decision of whether or not to gun down a woman and child who may or may not be about to toss a grenade at an approaching column of Marines, but they are isolated and disconnected, which makes the film feel spotty and disjointed.

From a political perspective, the film’s biggest problem is its protagonist, Chris Kyle, a Navy SEAL who, during his four tours in Iraq, had more confirmed kills than any sniper in U.S. military history. To some, that feat alone makes him a hero, which is why some mistake the film for a one-note celebration of superior American militarism (the recent terrorist activity in Europe has only fueled the film in this regard, allowing viewers who are looking for it to engage in the cathartic experience of watching a beefy slab of American machismo coolly gunning down Islamic baddies). Kyle is played in the film by Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle) as a generally decent, Texas-bred patriot who is driven by his desire to protect his fellow soldiers, a noble motive if ever there were one in combat. Some have taken issue with the fact that the film leaves out quite a bit of Kyle’s autobiographical braggadocio in which boasted of his hatred of all Iraqis, the “fun” of killing, and his utterly unproblematic division of “good” and “evil.” Some of this makes its way into the film via dialogue—Kyle refers several times to the enemy as “savages” and describes their actions as “evil”—but Cooper’s performance directs us more toward Kyle’s sense of duty than his boiling racism and anger.

Some have taken this as a whitewashing, a propagandistic attempt to drape an angry killer in the stars and stripes and call him “heroic,” but the film is more complex than that. Yes, the movie version of Chris Kyle is more palatable than the way he presents himself in his book (which also included hotly dispute anecdotes about punching former Minnesota governor Jessie Ventura in the face and shooting Hurricane Katrina looters from the roof of the Superdome), but it hardly qualifies as a whitewashing. He is still depicted in his early years as a brawling, hard-drinking cowboy with no real aim in life, and even after he dedicates himself to military service following 9/11, his commitment to warfare and his life at the end of telescopic sight draws him further and further away from the humanizing impulses of hearth and home, which is supposedly what he is helping to protect.

When he is at home between tours, his relationship with his wife, Taya (Sienna Miller), deteriorates because he shuts her out (Cooper’s steely blue eyes have never looked so cold as when he refuses to speak to her despite her begging him to). He is drawn back to the war zone again and again, a place most sane humans would want to escape—a point that is driven home by the shaky, disturbed words of Kyle’s younger brother, who winds up in the infantry. For all his gallantry, Kyle becomes something less than human, which makes him that much better of a soldier and killer. “I need you to be human again,” Taya cries at one point, a crucial line of dialogue that undercuts any simplistic sense of jingoism that might be ladled onto the film (at another point, Kyle tells his son while out hunting “It’s a heck of a thing stopping a beating heart,” which has to be a purposeful echo of the infamous line in Eastwood’s masterpiece Unforgiven “It’s a hell of a thing killin’ a man”). When Kyle gets his first kill, a buddy tries to celebrate it as a great moment, but he shakes him off, clearly disturbed by what he has done. That he becomes less and less disturbed by his necessary actions, to the point that he claims he could meet God with a clear conscience, is not an indication of the film’s simplicity, but rather of the inherent psychological effects of having to kill again and again and again.

It surprises me that anyone could take the film completely at face value. Eastwood’s career, at least since Unforgiven (1992), would seem to suggest that a nuanced view of its depiction of warfare and its sharpshooting protagonist would be in order. After all, Eastwood’s last two films about war, Flags of Our Fathers (2006) and Letters From Iwo Jima (2006), deconstructed the nature of military heroism from both American and Japanese perspectives, so it is hard to imagine that he would turn around and make American Sniper into the unproblematic celebration of violence that many are claiming it to be. It’s too bad that it isn’t a better movie, as its more complex shadings tend to get lost in the narrative rush and overly familiar situations, which makes it all the easier to misunderstand it and treat it like a political jackhammer, which is all anyone seems to be interested in doing right now.

Copyright ©2015 James Kendrick

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