It's the film that everybody's, well, sniping about. Clint Eastwood's intensely personal journey down the scope of America's most celebrated soldier has attracted controversy almost as quickly as Academy Award nominations - some say it's the frankest insight into the personal cost of war we've seen in a generation, others that it's glorifying what amounts to little more than mass murder. Based on the best-selling memoirs of Chris Kyle, American Sniper takes you through the Navy SEAL's recruitment into the military, before showing you the grim reality of his four tours of the Iraq War, the effect it had on his relationships with his wife and family, and how it haunted him on his return home. In the wake of Kyle's death at the hands of an ex-serviceman suffering from PTSD, his legendary feats now seem destined to become enshrined in American folklore, with Eastwood's film acting as a monument to his bravery, sacrifice, and character. Like all directors though, Eastwood's first duty is to entertaining an audience, not to accurately document a man, and, under scrutiny against Kyle's own words, American Sniper leaps from the embellished to the down-right made up very quickly. Now being posthumously exalted across the world for his feats of heroism in this film, few are stopping to ask themselves how much of American Sniper represents the real experiences of Chris Kyle, and how much is simply a film studio trying to add in some excitement.
WhatCulture's Managing Editor and Chief Reporter | Previously seen in Vice, Esquire, FourFourTwo, Sabotage Times, Loaded, The Set Pieces, and Mundial Magazine
