The UK-based Economist magazine took a snotty tone trying to explain the popularity of American Sniper to its sophisticated worldwide audience in its January 31 issue, attributing the popularity of the movie, based on the life of U.S. Navy Seal Chris Kyle, to mindless pro-American jingoism, mocking it as "more John Wayne than Wilfred Owen." (Owen was an anti-war poet in World War I.) Psst, Europe, isn't the whole "John Wayne" caricature getting old?
The liberal condescension started with the deck of headlines:
Bleeding red and blue -- “American Sniper” celebrates regret-free heroism. Small wonder critics hate it -- and half of America loves it.
(That would the right-wing half.)
A photo caption claimed the film showed "War, minus the angst."
Really? In American Sniper, an innocent father and son are killed by a drill-wielding maniac, after Chris Kyle's company persuades the family to inform on a target. Kyle suffers severe high blood pressure, and it's clear that his experience leaves an emotional toll on his relationship with his wife. The issue of posttraumatic stress disorder is prominent. But somehow the only thing this British-based magazine can see through its self-made filter is a cartoonish John Wayne flick:
When the troops return, the myth-making begins. It took four years after the Vietnam war ended for “The Deer Hunter” and “Apocalypse Now” to paint it as futile and degrading. Since then the cycle has sped up. The Iraq war already has one Oscar-winning film, “The Hurt Locker”. The success of another Iraq film, “American Sniper”, which was released on January 16th, suggests that views of that war are yet to settle. Many critics panned the film, which is more John Wayne than Wilfred Owen. Despite or, rather, because of this, it has been a hit: if early ticket sales are any guide, it will be one of the most successful war films ever made.
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One reason why “American Sniper” has caused such a kerfuffle is that its main character, Chris Kyle, is such an unusual Hollywood type. Film convention dictates that villains are charismatic, heroes troubled, misfits celebrated and so on. Kyle’s character is a hero with no flaws, a good man who kills without regret. At one point in the film a psychologist tries to pry into his memories, rummaging around in search of guilt. Kyle replies that his only regret is that he did not use his rangefinder and rifle to protect more marines.
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Throughout the film the insurgents get the sort of character development afforded to Nazi soldiers in a second-world-war romp. Kyle and his buddies refer to them as “savages”, and there is no hint from the director that they might be anything else.
Calling people trying to kill you "savages" is disturbing?
This is key to the film’s appeal: it is Iraq minus the bad bits, a celebration of heroism, skill and the bond between comrades. Such themes delight the half of the nation that Hollywood habitually ignores. When a director reaches out to conservatives, as Mel Gibson did with “The Passion of the Christ”, they open their wallets.
The reviewer certainly has a point about Hollywood ignoring conservatives. But "Minus the bad bits"? The Economist must have watched American Sniper with its eyes closed: Many of Kyle's fellow fighters are killed in the movie, and the psychological scars war can leave are made clear throughout the film. Director Clinton Eastwood himself went so far as to call it an anti-war movie.
The anonymous critic (The Economist does not typically carry bylines) managed to lose a thoughtfulness contest to offensive lefty mockumentarian Michael Moore, who at least recognized that American Sniper was not a rah-rah pro-war movie before calling it a racist and simplistic "mess."
The Economist's review ended with a Moore-style jab, lamenting that the movie should have portrayed Kyle as more kill-crazy to doom the movie's box office among conservatives:
The real Chris Kyle, a navy SEAL who wrote an autobiography, took more pleasure in the killing than his on-screen character does. “I’m not lying or exaggerating to say it was fun,” he wrote. A more faithful film would have been more unsettling and probably less popular.
