10 “True” Movies That Glossed Over Major Controversies

5. American Sniper

The Lie: The war hero of the film was actually something of a racist. American Sniper, directed by Clint Eastwood, stands as one of the most controversial movies to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar in the last few years. On the way to an impressive $500m at the worldwide box office, the film was received in a hail of controversy as a result of its simplification of its central character, who was largely painted as a black-and-white American hero. Marketing material for the film was drenched in stars and stripes and the tagline boasted Chris Kyle's credentials as "the most lethal sniper in American history". However, a look into the world of Kyle suggests that the real man was not quite as straightforwardly heroic as the film portrays. There's no doubt that Kyle was exceptional at his job, but it's deeply uncomfortable to see quotes from his memoir in which he discusses enjoying killing and describes the Iraqis he shot in alarmingly racist terms ("damn savages"). The film shaves off all of these harder edges to Kyle, casting everyman extraordinaire Bradley Cooper and giving the story a fairly standard hero narrative. There's little doubt that American Sniper would have been considerably less successful had it maintained the complexities of its protagonist. However, the story had the potential to be a complex and interesting look at an incredibly controversial conflict, anchored by a flawed central character. American Sniper clearly worked for a certain audience, but it describes a relatively modern story in terms of a disturbing false dichotomy in which white Christians are the good guys and everyone else is bad.