FILM REVIEW OF ''AMERICAN SNIPER" (2014)

In his gritty, 132 minute, R-rated, combat biography “American Sniper” (**** OUT OF ****) producer & director Clint Eastwood treats the life of real-life protagonist Chris Kyle with unmistakable reverence.  This tragic but heroic account of the deadliest sharpshooter in U.S. military history is compelling as well as propelling from fade-in to fade-out.  Similarly, “A-Team” actor Bradley Cooper delivers a career best performance as the legendary Texas native who racked up 160 confirmed kills as a sniper during four tours of duty in Iraq.  Cooper packed on nearly 40 pounds so he could impersonate the beefy Kyle, and the actor assured “Men’s Health” magazine that the 6000 calories-per-day diet that he shoveled down constituted a challenge in itself.  According to “People” magazine, real-life Navy SEAL sniper Kevin Lacz, who fought alongside Kyle, taught Cooper how to handle the sophisticated sniper weaponry.  This sober but never simple-minded saga about the Iraqi war doesn’t so much ponder the polemical politics that prompted America’s participation in the fighting as much as its use as a historical setting.  Indeed, Kyle was gung-ho about serving his country after suicide bombers had blasted the Marine barracks to rubble in Beirut in 1983.  Meantime, people who have read Kyle’s 2012 memoir may complain about some of the liberties that Eastwood and “Paranoia” scenarist Jason Hall have taken in their adaptation of the New York Times bestseller.  Nevertheless, Eastwood has fashioned a realistic but patriotic film with a wrinkle or two that has mesmerized domestic audiences. For example, Kyle believed in what he was doing in Iraq while his younger brother abhorred not only the war but also the country. Eastwood celebrates the sacrifices that these citizens made without turning “American Sniper” into a rabble-rousing, Rambo fantasy.

“American Sniper” opens in Iraq with Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) sprawled belly down on a Fallujah roof-top checking potential threats to the Marines on the street below as they rattle one door after another in search of hostiles.  Initially, Kyle spots a military-age, Iraqi native on a balcony. Chatting on a cell phone, he is watching the troops approach him.  This suspicious fellow vanishes from Kyle’s sight.  Moments later, a mother dressed like an angel of death in black emerges onto the street with her son.  The mother hands her son a grenade, and they approach a tank with troops following it.  Just as Kyle is scrutinizing these two civilians through his sniper scope, his spotter warns him that he could land in the military prison at Fort Leavenworth for shooting friendly civilians.  This issue arises more than once in “American Sniper.”  Civilians in combat zones without a good reason created a quandary because our guys couldn’t be sure who was either sympathetic or unfriendly.  Anyway, as Kyle caresses the trigger of his sniper rifle, Eastwood flashbacks to Kyle’s life as a Texas teen shooting his first deer.  Eastwood and Hall furnish us with a montage of Kyle’s life along with his God-fearing father’s philosophy.  We see Kyle rush to the rescue of his younger brother Jeff on the playground at their elementary school as an obese bully beats up Jeff.  At the dinner table, Kyle’s stern father Wayne (Ben Reed of “Scanner Cop”) categorizes humans into three types: predatory wolves, sheep, and sheepdogs.  Brandishing his rolled up belt for emphasis, Wayne warns them that they will neither be predators nor sheep, but instead sheepdogs.  Wayne promises to punish them for anything less.  During his military service, Chris behaves like a sheepdog.  Repeatedly, he risks his life to save his fellow Marines.  Occasionally, “American Sniper” lightens up and lets you laugh with Chris about his romantic conquests both good and bad.

Aside from a protracted flashback sequence early into the action, “American Sniper” adheres to a conventional, straightforward storyline, chronicling the high points of Kyle’s experiences under fire.  Comparatively, director Peter Berg’s “Lone Survivor” (2013), starring Mark Wahlberg, could serve as a companion piece to “American Sniper.”  The big difference is Bradley Cooper’s SEAL team hero displays no compunctions about shooting kids, whereas Mark Wahlberg’s real-life SEAL team hero Marcus Luttrell couldn’t bring himself to kill an innocent goat herder’s son.  Meanwhile, “American Sniper” alternates between our hero’s harrowing battlefield exploits and his home front activities with his wife and family.  Eastwood doesn’t immortalize Chris Kyle as an invincible, larger-than-life, titan. Actually, we watch in horror as Kyle unravels with each tour until he can no longer tolerate the traumatic pressure of combat.  In this respect, “American Sniper” doesn’t pull any punches about the caliber of warfare that our guys had to contend with in Iraq.  Mind you, it isn’t gripping in the same slam-bang sense that “Black Hawk Down” was, but “American Sniper” still qualifies as a tour-de-force, first-rate, action yarn.  I don’t think Bradley Cooper will clinch the Best Actor Oscar, but you will know that Cooper takes his craft seriously.  Aside from Cooper, the only other three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood character is Kyle’s long-suffering wife, Taya (British actress Sienna Miller of “Foxcatcher”), who goes toe-to-toe with him.

Primarily, Eastwood filters everything through Kyle’s perspective, and you don’t witness any of those standard-issue scenes with natty politicians and high-ranking officers arguing about strategy at headquarters.  Eastwood rarely shifts the focus away from either Kyle with his family or Kyle with his buddies.  Of course, Kyle and his buddies form a tightly knit group from their rigorous beachfront SEAL team training to the devastating combat in Iraq. Predictably, warfare dwindles their numbers.  Particularly shattering is Kyle’s loss of his buddy Biggles (Jake McDorman of “Aquamarine”) who survives long enough to die in surgery. The camaraderie between Kyle and Biggles is sometimes hilarious as well as distressing.  Kyle’s younger brother Jeff (Keir O'Donnell of “Wedding Crashers”) drifts into and out of the action.  Jeff accompanies Kyle on the rodeo circuit in Texas and later follows him to the battlefield in Iraq.  Altogether, “American Sniper” ranks as a memorable military actioneer with some salty dialogue.

FILM REVIEW OF ''GODZILLA'' (2014)

Believe it or not, although the Japanese made their landmark monster movie “Godzilla” in 1954, Hollywood beat them to the punch with “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.”   Adapted from a Ray Bradbury short story published in “The Saturday Evening Post” magazine, “Beast” concerned a prodigious prehistoric amphibian awakened from hibernation by atomic bomb blasts.  Wasting no time, the scaly leviathan wended its way to New York City where it wrecked havoc on a heretofore unparalleled scale.  Even before “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms,” Hollywood had made a 1925 silent-era movie “The Lost World” where a dinosaur on the loose rampaged through London.  Anyway, about a year after “Beast” came out, the Japanese released “Gojira,” and the Toho Company went on to exploit its radioactive creature for every cent it was worth.  Godzilla stomped Tokyo to smithereens, and the film proved so profitable that Hollywood reedited it to accommodate American actors and changed the title from “Gojira” to “Godzilla.”  Afterward, Hollywood entrusted the gigantic monster genre to the Japanese.  Meantime, Toho has churned out at least 28 Godzilla epics over a 60 year period and coined millions at the box office with their man in a rubber suit.  Eventually, rival Japanese studios produced Godzilla knock-offs; the chief example was the titanic turtle “Gamera” that breathed fire. 

In 1998, “Independence Day” director Roland Emmerich helmed the first American “Godzilla,” but it took too many liberties with the Toho legend.  First, Big G lost his incendiary breath.  Second, Big G resembled a Komodo dragon.  Emmerich and co-scenarist Dean Devlin rewrote Godzilla’s origins.  Comparably, “Godzilla” (1998) sold only half as many tickets during its opening weekend as “Monster” director Gareth Edwards’ ambitious, second American reboot of Big G.  Unlike Emmerich’s “Godzilla” that synthesized spectacle and slapstick, Edwards and “Seventh Son” scenarist Max Borenstein have shunned humor in favor of catastrophe.  The new “Godzilla” (*** OUT OF ****) doesn’t embroil lame-brained amateurs, but grim-faced scientific and military types.  Indeed, this “Godzilla” treats the Toho icon with genuine respect and dignity.  This time around Godzilla isn’t searching for someplace to lay its eggs.  Instead, Big G has embarked on its own crusade to defend mankind and thwart a couple of nuclear-age behemoths that want to lay their eggs in San Francisco.  Ironically, Big G wins the battle of the monsters, but he doesn’t garner as much stomp time as he did in Emmerich’s “Godzilla.”  You’ll have to wait patiently about an hour for Big G to show up.  Nevertheless, Godzilla makes a dramatic entrance, and he dominates the action for the last half-hour.  Edwards’ straight-forward version of “Godzilla” eclipses Emmerich’s comic version.

Most of the amusing “Godzilla” movies from the 1960s & 1970s pitted Big G against two enemies, and the new “Godzilla” adopts the scenario of the outnumbered hero.  The battle scenes between Godzilla and the MUTOs (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) are thoroughly invigorating.  Unfortunately, the two biggest drawbacks to Edwards’ largely entertaining “Godzilla” are its dreary, one-dimensional humans who clutter up the action and the bland MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) monsters that resemble gargantuan mosquitoes that walk on their knuckles like gorillas.  A cast of familiar faces cannot compensate for their sketchy characters.  Mankind isn’t half as interesting as Godzilla, especially when he tangles with the MUTOs in a world class smack-down brawl.  Ironically, Big G appears to get the short shrift.  “Godzilla” isn’t so much about the monsters as the spectacular collateral damage that Godzilla and two airborne giants wreck on mankind.  The destruction, or perhaps urban renewal, matches the wholesale mayhem of the “Transformers” trilogy and Marvel’s “The Avengers.”  Traditionally, filmmakers have employed Godzilla as allegory for the appalling consequences mankind has paid for tampering with our environment.  Essentially, Godzilla has always been the cultural embodiment of global warming.

The action unfolds in 1954 when the military detonates atomic devices at the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in a futile effort to destroy Godzilla.  We catch a glimpse of Big-G’s heavily spiked back emerging from the depths as the explosions erupt.  Later, a nuclear power plant in Japan collapses, and the radioactive ruins become the equivalent of Area 51.  Janjira Plant Supervisor Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston of “Drive”) watches in horror as his wife Sandra (Juliette Binoche of “The English Patient”) dies when the reactor blows up.  Afterward, the government quarantines the collapsed plant, but Brody suspects the government is orchestrating a cover-up.  Meantime, Joe's son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson of “Savages”) grows up, joins the Navy, and specializes in explosive ordnance disposal.  He marries Elle (Elizabeth Olsen of “Oldboy”) who is nurse in San Francisco.  Naturally, they have a son Sam (Carson Bolde).  Fifteen years after the Janjira disaster, Joe hasn’t recanted his crazy theories about a cover-up.  The authorities arrest him for trespassing in his old home in the quarantine zone.  They escort him to meet two scientists, Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and Graham (Sally Hawkins), who have established a secret facility within the Janjira ruins.  All hell breaks loose a second time, and a colossal, winged reptile materializes. 

Clearly, the last thing director Gareth Edwards wanted for us to do is snicker at his “Godzilla” reboot.  Not only does he want us to take Godzilla seriously as a monster, but he also wants us to take the movie “Godzilla” seriously.  This new “Godzilla” shares little in common with the-man-in-a-rubber-suit “Godzilla” franchise.  If you haven’t seen either “Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla” (1994) or “Godzilla vs. Megalon” (1973), you haven’t seen some of the vintage “Godzilla” entries that challenge your suspension of disbelief.  Edwards draws on Steven Spielberg’s classic “Jaws” as a template for both the presentation and the pacing of this impressive, beautifully lensed, two hour plus CGI monstrosity.  Like the 1998 “Godzilla,” the new “Godzilla” rewrites the creature’s origins.  Despite the outlandish sci-fi fantasy elements, the visual effects make everything appear believable.  The spectacle of destruction in Japan, Hawaii, Las Vegas and San Francisco is stunning.  Altogether, Edward’s “Godzilla” breathes new fire into a old franchise.