Eastwood, Cooper get it right in ‘American Sniper’

Synopsis: Navy SEAL Chris Kyle goes to war a soldier and retires as a legend. With his pinpoint accuracy Kyle helps save many soldiers’ lives on the battlefront. After four tours, Kyle comes home to his family, only to find that protecting his country is where his heart will always be.

“American Sniper” was nothing less than astounding. The movie was such a solid film throughout and it had us on the edges of our seats for two hours. Bradley Cooper did an incredible job playing Kyle. Director Clint Eastwood has yet to disappoint us and did a fantastic job honoring the story of this man. Eastwood and Cooper do a great job of revealing the mentality of a sniper at war. They really get you invested in Kyle and the trauma that he encounters throughout his tours.

What worked: Cooper stole the show for us with his phenomenal performance as Chris Kyle. Cooper is able to embody everything that was Kyle, and we believe that this might be his best performance yet. One thing that truly impressed us about this film was the realistic portrayal of modern warfare. It felt like we were embedded in Iraq with the American forces, with danger lurking around every corner and upon every rooftop. At 84, Eastwood is still blowing us way with the films he’s making. Eastwood was able to pace this movie so that we were always looking forward to what would happen next. We never got bored or found our minds wandering. Eastwood also does a great job of capturing the psychological horror of Kyle’s post-traumatic stress disorder from the moment of his first kill to his retirement after his fourth tour. Cooper does a stellar job showing us Kyle’s transformation from being a cowboy to becoming a legendary Navy SEAL sniper and all that comes with the title.

What didn’t work: Honestly, we can’t think of anything overtly wrong with this movie. Anything that we could list would only be nit-picking. The only thing we could say is that we wish there was something in this movie to totally knock it out of the park. Everything was really good, but it just needed something more to get to that perfect 10.

The majority of this film had us on the edges of our seats, with every patriotic bone in our bodies cheering and rooting for Kyle to take out the opposing sniper. This film wasn’t mind-boggling, but it was very entertaining and thoroughly engrossing. It was well worth the money to watch it in the theater. We rarely go to a movie that has the audience clapping on multiple occasions and dead silence as they exit the theater. This was a great movie, and we give Eastwood’s “American Sniper” a 9 out of 10.

Reviewed by: Nate Gomes, Dylan McMullen

This story was originally published January 22, 2015 at 4:15 PM with the headline "Eastwood, Cooper get it right in ‘American Sniper’."