A
Arizona_Mike
Guest
I’m surprised by how many - left, right, libertarian, or what have you - have expressed their distaste and disgust for the film without having seen it. While I respect one’s desire not to view every movie that they may find distressing or objectionable, I suspect many are reviewing an imaginary internal film unspooling before their mind’s eye that bears little relationship to the film, and more to one’s preconceptions.
I saw it and thought it was quite good.
It condenses and rearranges some of the facts of Chief Kyle’s life to achieve a more linear narrative, and adds a villain that based on a real enemy sniper that Kyle described but did not kill, but it seems fundamentally accurate to the facts as I know them.
It doesn’t really get into the politics of the war, and some characters depicted in the film - such as Kyle’s brother - seem to be critical of it.
If someone has a husband, wife, son, daughter, or other family member who has done a tour of service, I would highly recommend that they go see it, not so much to get a sense of what battle is like - what movie can actually capture that? - but because while the battle scenes are memorably frightening, including a battle fought in the near total darkness of a haboob dust storm, it captures better than any other movie I have seen what the war does to you between the tours - the distance it places between the service member and loved ones, the the feelings of alienation displacement and hypervigilance. These scenes are not done melodramatically and sometimes their effect is quite subtle, but are quite true to life.
Without getting into any spoilers for those who are not aware of how Kyle’s life turned out, it has one of the saddest endings of any recent film. I’ve seen it twice, and both times the large audience was as quiet as I’ve heard any audience, except for some crying. As a friend said, the mood of the audience afterwards as they left the theater was like walking out of an actual funeral. It’s quite moving.
From some of the comments on here and on other sites, there appears to be a distaste because Kyle’s military specialty was that of a sniper - which has connotations from JFK and other political assassinations of someone who is little better than a contract killer. But in a sense, every combat soldier is expected to be a sniper - if an enemy is armed and poses an immediate threat to one’s comrades, any soldier will shoot someone who is approaching your position with a rifle or grenade, or is placing an IED to blow the legs off your friends. A military sniper is just a soldier who is better trained as a marksman and has longer-range weaponry.
Kyle’s job largely consisted of setting up in a position to watch over Marines who were clearing, block-by-block, highly dangerous cities which were controlled by the terrorist group al Qaeda in Iraq. It was a very dangerous job, as snipers tend to draw fire once their position is known, and Kyle was the target of incoming rocket fire on occasion. He would shoot people who represented an immediate threat to the people he considered his family. I consider that a just application of self-defense theory as described in the Catechism - one is allowed to use lethal force in defense of one’s self of others.
Kyle obviously despised those who practiced the sort of despicable torture and murder of civilian non-combatants that is accurately depicted in the film. (He has been frequently chided in recent reviews and left-wing blogs for calling such people “savages,” but as he observed first hand an enemy torture chamber where Iraqi people, including the mentally retarded, were vivisected to gain information and to discourage cooperation with the Americans, I think he can be forgiven that description. In context, he was clearly not referring to all Iraqis, only the terrorist combatants.)
Chief Kyle was a good if imperfect man who fought to protect those he considered his brothers, and was as good at it and took pride in what he did - the saving of lives more than the killing, from the evidence. I consider soldiers who act honorably to be under the protection of St. Michael, and would note that not a few saints, such as St. John of Capistrano, St. Louis IX, St. Ignatius of Loyola, and St. Joan of Arc, also saw battle in politically controversial wars.
I recommend it highly.
I saw it and thought it was quite good.
It condenses and rearranges some of the facts of Chief Kyle’s life to achieve a more linear narrative, and adds a villain that based on a real enemy sniper that Kyle described but did not kill, but it seems fundamentally accurate to the facts as I know them.
It doesn’t really get into the politics of the war, and some characters depicted in the film - such as Kyle’s brother - seem to be critical of it.
If someone has a husband, wife, son, daughter, or other family member who has done a tour of service, I would highly recommend that they go see it, not so much to get a sense of what battle is like - what movie can actually capture that? - but because while the battle scenes are memorably frightening, including a battle fought in the near total darkness of a haboob dust storm, it captures better than any other movie I have seen what the war does to you between the tours - the distance it places between the service member and loved ones, the the feelings of alienation displacement and hypervigilance. These scenes are not done melodramatically and sometimes their effect is quite subtle, but are quite true to life.
Without getting into any spoilers for those who are not aware of how Kyle’s life turned out, it has one of the saddest endings of any recent film. I’ve seen it twice, and both times the large audience was as quiet as I’ve heard any audience, except for some crying. As a friend said, the mood of the audience afterwards as they left the theater was like walking out of an actual funeral. It’s quite moving.
From some of the comments on here and on other sites, there appears to be a distaste because Kyle’s military specialty was that of a sniper - which has connotations from JFK and other political assassinations of someone who is little better than a contract killer. But in a sense, every combat soldier is expected to be a sniper - if an enemy is armed and poses an immediate threat to one’s comrades, any soldier will shoot someone who is approaching your position with a rifle or grenade, or is placing an IED to blow the legs off your friends. A military sniper is just a soldier who is better trained as a marksman and has longer-range weaponry.
Kyle’s job largely consisted of setting up in a position to watch over Marines who were clearing, block-by-block, highly dangerous cities which were controlled by the terrorist group al Qaeda in Iraq. It was a very dangerous job, as snipers tend to draw fire once their position is known, and Kyle was the target of incoming rocket fire on occasion. He would shoot people who represented an immediate threat to the people he considered his family. I consider that a just application of self-defense theory as described in the Catechism - one is allowed to use lethal force in defense of one’s self of others.
Kyle obviously despised those who practiced the sort of despicable torture and murder of civilian non-combatants that is accurately depicted in the film. (He has been frequently chided in recent reviews and left-wing blogs for calling such people “savages,” but as he observed first hand an enemy torture chamber where Iraqi people, including the mentally retarded, were vivisected to gain information and to discourage cooperation with the Americans, I think he can be forgiven that description. In context, he was clearly not referring to all Iraqis, only the terrorist combatants.)
Chief Kyle was a good if imperfect man who fought to protect those he considered his brothers, and was as good at it and took pride in what he did - the saving of lives more than the killing, from the evidence. I consider soldiers who act honorably to be under the protection of St. Michael, and would note that not a few saints, such as St. John of Capistrano, St. Louis IX, St. Ignatius of Loyola, and St. Joan of Arc, also saw battle in politically controversial wars.
I recommend it highly.
