Why We Line Up for American Sniper

Bann

Doris Day meets Lady Gaga
PREMO Member
I could have written this review. I wish I had. (It's a bit long and reveals a few movie tidbits, but worth the read)

I can't even decide which part to excerpt, it's so good. I guess I will excerpt the first part, because that is really the first thing I posted myself after watching the movie.

What made the ending of America’s top-grossing movie of the past two weeks so extraordinary was what happened not during the movie but after it. Anyone who’s seen it will tell you. It was the silence, the silence as American Sniper came to an end. There was no soundtrack blaring at us as the credits rolled, a bold decision by the movie’s 84-year-old director, Clint Eastwood. That choice had its intended effect; not one person in the theater spoke while they rolled.


In a world where silence is difficult to find anywhere human beings gather — and even where we don’t — Clint Eastwood created a space for the audience to just shut up for a moment and share some silent time together, without comment, without opinion or text or tweet.

But it wasn’t just the silence. It was the stillness. Not one person in a very full theater moved as the credits rolled. Not one person got up and tried to beat the crowd or got on the phone.


It wasn’t until the house lights were up that the audience ushered out of the theater, visibly shaken, most of us wiping away tears, or still trying to hold them back, as if we’d just been through something important together — something profound, like a funeral. It was just a few hundred of us, old and young, white and black, and every ethnic group imaginable, alone in the dark in the Malco Theater in Oxford, Miss., doing our best to process what we’d just witnessed and lived through, which was, in some respects, what so many of our soldiers lived through in Iraq.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/397225/why-we-line-american-sniper-lee-habeeb/page/0/1
 

Bann

Doris Day meets Lady Gaga
PREMO Member
..and this was about the next thing I had to say about the movie -

Actually, that’s not quite true. We witnessed what one soldier — Chris Kyle, the deadliest sniper in the American military during the Iraq War — lived through on and off the battlefield. We walked in Chris Kyle’s boots for two hours and 14 minutes, through four tours of duty, his trips to Iraq and his trips back home again. We got to know where he was born, how he grew up, what he believed, and, most important, how his service in Iraq impacted him — and his family.
 

somdwatch

Well-Known Member
I firmly believe, that a lot of us watch this movie because it's him, Chris Kyle, who we wish we could be like. Serving a cause that is bigger than ourselves and doing so with a clear conscience for what he had to do.

It's a shame those who have spoken out against it have no idea what it is to serve, unless of course it only serves their over inflated view of themselves.
 

b23hqb

Well-Known Member
PREMO Member
I've read and possess the book, and I'll buy the DVD when it comes out. Should be a very good watch.
 

Bay_Kat

Tropical
I'm not really one for movie theatres. But this is one I would definitely say you should see in the theatre.

I'm the same, before this the last movie I saw at the theater was Despicable Me 2 and that's only because I liked the first one so much and didn't want to wait for the DVD.
 

b23hqb

Well-Known Member
PREMO Member
I'm the same, before this the last movie I saw at the theater was Despicable Me 2 and that's only because I liked the first one so much and didn't want to wait for the DVD.

All right, all right - keep piling on..........
 

kom526

They call me ... Sarcasmo
This is a fantastic movie. I did not see it as a "war movie" but rather a "warrior movie". If you see this and come out thinking that it is a political or glorification statement then you are intellectually bankrupt and need to stick with Jim Carrey and Michael Moore movies. Yes, this movie has a metric shiat ton of action and if you have earned a CAR or CIB you will feel it and remember every minute of what you did to earn those awards. But, you also will relate to the battles we dealt with (some to greater extents than others) as we came home. That to me is what the story is about. The dichotomy that is a warriors life.
 

Larry Gude

Strung Out
War movies are inevitable.

So, what kind of war movie? Grand, idealistic ones about right and wrong, good and bad, us against them? Ones about specific events, a time and place? In general, US audiences get war movies that are NOT about a specific real life person. 'We were soldiers once' is a fairly rare example that is, mainly, about one person. Civil War movies are generally fiction based on fact. We did have the Audie Murphy flicks about WWI and that is, largely, because we were so lied to about even going to that war, it's conduct, which was insane and makes leaders look like clueless, callous madmen, which they were, incapable of bridging the gap between old styles of war and new technology. No one wanted to see a movie where you get to know a few characters and then, in the first action scene every single one of them gets mowed down.

We had lots of WWII movies but, I can't think of even one that was about an individual and that is because it was so grand, large scale, so many great leaders, hero's in the trenches, that generation preferred the shared sacrifice, we were all in it together, view. Korea was just ugly and not much to celebrate. Vietnam was so bad, many of our war movies were fictional characters doing fictional things. There was nothing redeeming about it either. We didn't get to win.

Gulf war one has lots of fiction around it and, again, with nothing to celebrate or be proud of, nothing redeeming.

That's where the ongoing war is now, nothing redeeming. We're told 'ah, but, you're protected!' but, that really doesn't reconcile too well when people from one nation attacking with box cutters means war with some other nation and that, if not, if we don't fight back, the box cutters will become nuclear bombs in underwear.

We have Zero dark thirty about an individual.
We have lone survivor.
Now, we have Sniper.

There is no grand, 'us against them' movie to be had here. No winning and victory to balance the loses against. No great purpose. But, we've been fighting for 13 years. Really, 23 if you count Iraq now as the continuation of GW I.

So, we have this void, this emptiness. We have no bomb to argue over as to whether it was worth it or not to win. No social issue to balance against the cost. No Great Evil Man who must be beaten for all mankind. We don't even have an ideology to battle against because our leaders REFUSE to even use the word. Can you imagine a forever war against communism and we never use the word???? "Why, we're fighting extremists! Radicals!" Can you even ponder WWII if we were going after Hitler and Goebels and took care to distinguish them from national socialism? We were fighting Tojo and not imperialism?????

We have allowed ourselves into an intellectually bankrupt cul de sac where ALL our leaders, will not call our war with Islam a war with Islam. And, as such, we have nothing to support us. No clarity. No goals or purpose. Just forever 'sorta' war. We're fighting bin Laden. We're fighting some other terrorist. We're fighting this little group. The Taliban. Who???? We're fighting fundamentalist Muslims who have nothing to do with Islam. Shia! Sunni! Wahabi! But, NOT Islam!!! THOSE PEOPLE! They're gonna kill us all if we don't stay at war with them forever! A few bad apples, a handful of people in caves or running around the desert are just gonna, somehow, have the resources to nuke us BUT, it has NOTHING to do with...well, you know.

So, American Sniper gives us...something. A heroic person who did great things, conflicted, troubled, as we are, over the whole mess, yet in the extreme, the very personal of a sniper who, day after day put cross-hairs on the 'enemy' and in a flash, took their lives, in our name. Then comes home. Then goes back. Then away. Then back. Why? Why do we keep sending them back? For what? What does it all mean if there isn't even a declaration of who we're fighting and why and what our goal is???

So, does Sniper give us that? Haven't seen it yet. As much as it is talked about, do I even need to? Look at how much it IS talked about. How many people have we deployed this past 13 years to drive trucks, provide support, walk a patrol, man posts, sometimes fight, mostly not? Try and do their jobs with rules that are, in many ways, more restrictive than what a cop in the US faces? All of them have been resolved to one person? You could never do that with WWII. Or the Civil War.

This war is this...thing...that just keeps going on and on. There hasn't been another 9/11 so, it must be working? Right??? Shooting a boy and his mom had to have made America safer, right? Defended our freedom? Right???? Having a guy, a super sniper, the greatest sniper in American history, HE knows what we're doing, right? He's killing those 'savages', those 'enemies', those commie/Nazi/gook/Jap whomever's who threaten OUR way of life, our Constitution??? Right????

Chris Kyle gives us the clarity and purpose we lack in our war with...err....our war on....uhm....well, for 2 1/2 hours it all makes sense. Us, them. Good guys, bad guys. And all our confusion, all our uncertainty, he absorbs it for us. Deals with it as our avenging warrior. Satisfaction?

And then, we ask him to go back and do it again as we go back to not really knowing what we're doing and why.
 

lovinmaryland

Well-Known Member
I'm the same, before this the last movie I saw at the theater was Despicable Me 2 and that's only because I liked the first one so much and didn't want to wait for the DVD.


We actually tried to see it Christmas because we had heard that is when it came out. Well of course not in our area...so we saw Unbroken instead (just ok IMO) but before that the last time I had been to the movies was when Django Unchained came out (roughly 3 years ago)

American Sniper is one of those films where you actually feel like youre there in the movie so the theatre definitely enhanced that feeling...for me at least.
 
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