I am all for art. Everyone has a right to artistically express their opinions and ideas. But I usually draw the line BEFORE I oppress an entire race of people. The biggest and most disgusting problem with American Sniper is that from the very first scene to the very last scene, every Iraqi — EVERY SINGLE ONE — is portrayed as an evil, soulless bastard out to kill Americans. There is not a single “good” Iraqi in the entire film. Sniper is extremely Islamophobic and doesn’t seem to care.

This is a problem because we shouldn’t be judging an entire race of people off a few radicals who do crazy things. (Those who are religious should understand this fact particularly well).

If you watched any news source during the Iraq war, you would know that an EXTREMELY disturbing amount of casualties were Iraqi civilians. In fact civilians made up over 70% of the casualties of the entire war. Not terrorists, not soldiers, but INNOCENT men, women, and children. American Sniper is problematic in that it shows NONE of this. It completely ignores the fact that the VAST majority of Muslims (literally like 99.99%) were just like you and me, but happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But we think, after leaving the movie, that all Muslims were out to kill American troops. Kyle also admitted in his book that he interchangeably used the words “savages” and “Iraqis,” — this transfers on screen too, when Kyle and his friend talk about the wedding ring his friend purchased from the “savages.” If you don’t see the glaringly obvious problem with this then I feel extremely bad for you.

“Nuh uhh… but at the beginning of the movie it says like that all civilians were evacuated and that like everyone in the vicinity was trying to kill the troops, man.”

That doesn’t matter. The point is that the Iraq War did NOT happen like the movie tells it. But American Sniper makes you believe that’s how it happened, when, even if you watched the news ONCE during the last 11 years you would know it’s not.

Sniper is a textbook example of American propaganda. By the end of the film everyone is convinced everything Kyle did was justified because of the emotional bullshit it poorly produces. Audiences walk out in complete silence like “oh my god, that was so powerful” and they get all gung ho which is sad because they aren’t being told truth, and though some may acknowledge the fact that it is a movie, others will still let it influence how they think of Muslims and the Iraq war in general.

As for the other aspects of the film…

The script is terrible. Not only is it full of cliches (Kyle’s friend talking about the ring he got for his wife before getting shot, the cheesy phone dialogue, the cheesy wife/husband dialogue (WITH THE FAKE BABY. OH MY GOD THAT DRAINED THE SCENE OF ALL ITS EMOTIONAL INTENSITY. Dude… You are Clint Eastwood. People will gladly let you use their babies for a two minute scene. How did you ACTUALLY mess this up… that baby is literally a metaphor for the entire film – a superficial limb piece of plastic that pretends it’s cute and powerful when it is really FAKE and VOID of all truth.)). The script is adapted from Chris Kyle’s book and he was known to “overembellish” what actually happened. Look up the history of the war vs. Chris Kyle’s book. There are HUGE differences. Then add on the fact that the book was adapted into a movie, which is OBVIOUSLY going to change stuff around and add stuff which make it a film about literally nothing. Examples include but are not limited to: the sniping antagonist may have existed, but Chris Kyle never dealt with him; There was no boy in the opening memoire of the book (which is the opening of the movie with the woman giving the bomb to the child) this is extra bad because it paints Muslims as being even more evil. Still not convinced? Wrestler Jesse Ventura won a $1.8 million lawsuit against Kyle because of defamation. Kyle claims he punched Ventura in a bar after Ventura made some inappropriate comments about Navy Seals. Ventura never met Chris Kyle.

The fight scenes were cliche and boring. The cinematography was dreadfully boring. The acting wasn’t good — Cooper doesn’t deserve that nomination, give it to Selma.

You want good war movies? A Hunt for Red October, Thin Red Line, Paths of Glory, Aguirre… more relatable to American Sniper would be probably be Hurt Locker (which does things correctly) …  screw it. almost everything that isn’t American Sniper.

If you enjoyed this film for its entertainment value… I sorta (not really) understand. If you enjoyed this film because you genuinely believed it was a good film… I’m kind of appalled.