What a shock: Hollywood pushing back at "The Sniper"

I'm pretty sure that "Mustafa" thing was merely a storytelling device to give Kyle a foil.

 

Having read the book, I'm sure it was. But why? The movie would have held up perfectly fine if it stayed closer to book.

One of the best war movies I've seen was Black Hawk Down and I thought it that was dead nuts on to Bowden's book.

 

Black Hawk Down is truer to the book than any war movie I've ever seen. Bowden's book was phenomenal in its reporting, and the writing was very good, too.

 

He was a real Fredrick Zoller up on the roof.

 

No, just looking at the possible complaints of the movie and where they are directed.

 

If the movie leaves out the Ventura punch and the truck shooting, it is leaving out two effects of what happened to him.

I'll probably watch the movie someday, but I am no hurry to see it.

 

Well, of course. Movies have to make choices, they're a different art form, and they are typically subject to entertainment standards that even some TV shows are able to elude.

But that doesn't mean you can't examine its integrity level. I'll give you an extreme example on the liberal side: The Life of David Gale is a fairly despicable movie preaching against the death penalty. So was Rendition, in examining the cost of torture. Sniper isn't nearly as objectionable as those two were.

But, hey, I would have welcomed a movie about Kyle's full story, in part because it would have made a better movie. And it's hard to argue that it wouldn't have. Having seen Sniper, I'd say it's more of a high-concept version of The Hurt Locker. It's fine. An action movie with some nods at the stateside drama. But what a full character study it could have been.

 

I think the book persona was partially and perhaps largely a posture, and what wasn't a posture was woefully myopic. He was part of the most poorly-conceived attempt at nation-building at best and a fool's errand at worst.

 

New complaint surfacing today -- apparently the baby scene so obviously featured a doll that critics were laughing during the screening.

 

I don't have much of a problem with the movie altering his character in service of storytelling. That ship has long since sailed.

That being said, people should understand that they are watching a dramatization of a person's life and character, likely taking liberties with the truth in service to storytelling conventions and time constraints.

If people want to make a determination about Chris Kyle, they should base that determination on the real Chris Kyle, not Clint Eastwood's version of Chris Kyle. That's just a character.

 

The real Chris Kyle was a bit of a fake, though.