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 ''EXECUTIVE ACTION" (1973)

This landmark movie--the first to tackle this controversial issue--integrates authentic black & white newsreel footage of John F. Kennedy before and after his assassination with a dramatized conspiracy to kill the President. "Executive Action" (*** out of ****) unfolds with the following prologue:"Before his death, former President Lyndon B. Johnson gave a three hour interview to a well-known television commentator. On May 2, 1970, when the interview was shown on a national television network, it included the message that certain material had been deleted at President Johnson's insistence. It has been revealed that in the censored section, Johnson had expressed misgivings about the finding that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone, and that in fact, he (LBJ) suspected that a conspiracy had been involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy." The fascinating thing about this modest little picture is that the protagonists are all villains. Typically, a hero arises to defeat the adversaries, but no hero emerges in "Executive Action." Indeed, it is interesting to speculate whether this film could not have been produced before 1973 under the inflexible Production Code Administration simply because the villains win and nobody punishes them for their horrendous crime.

Director David Miller of "Lonely Are the Brave," "The Flying Tigers," and "Billy the Kid" helmed this provocative yarn that consists ostensibly of distinguished gentlemen--Washington power brokers acting as intermediaries--who assemble behind closed doors and discuss the plan to terminate JFK with extreme prejudice. The first meeting convenes on June 5, 1963. Affluent businessmen James Farrington (Burt Lancaster of "Elmer Gantry")and Foster (Robert Ryan of "The Proud Ones")spend a third of the time trying to convince influential Southern businessman Harold Ferguson (Will Greer of CBS-TV's "The Waltons") that Kennedy has put America on the wrong course. A professor warns them about the enormous power that the Kennedy dynasty wields, and they have laid out a time table that has JFK serving two terms as President and his two brothers Robert and Teddy serving two terms. "And in each administration, the brothers who are not president will take over the most powerful cabinet posts. They have several hundred million dollars and the best brains on earth to carry them through. They have put together a powerful coalition of big city machines, labor, Negroes, Jews, and that press that will make him unbeatable in 1964." Initially Ferguson shows skepticism. He points out that Kennedy "has appointed Republicans to the Treasury, the Navy, and another is head of the CIA. His brother Bobby worked on Joe McCarthy;s committee." Finally, he observes that Kennedy's father Joseph "is farther to the right than I am." The professor states that JFK will call for a test-ban treaty with the Soviets, lead the black revolution which will trigger a white backlash and blood in the streets and withdraw from Vietnam.

Before Farrington and Foster win Ferguson over to their cause, they explain that Europeans kill heads of state with conspiracies. In America, however, lone assassins with no familiarity with firearms have consistently either killed or tried to kill Presidents. First, the conspirators design an elaborate scenario to incriminate a fall guy--Lee Harvey Oswald--as the assassin. They study Oswald's troubled history and even suspect that he has been used by intelligence outfits for his jaunts to the USSR. Second, they decide to kill Kennedy while he is riding in a motorcade. Foster explains that "motorcades are scheduled well in advance and they give you a chance to fire from cover and getaway in the confusion." Farrington states that they will use "trained, reliable professionals." He elaborates: "They only possible scenario is three rifles with triangulated gunfire. Two firing at the retreating target. The third firing as the target advances." Interspersed among these exposition heavy conference scenes are scenes of two sniper teams practicing on dummies in a car drawn through remote locations. Ed Lauter of "The Longest Yard" plays the Operations Chief of Team A, and veteran character actor Dick Miller of "The Terminator" plays one of the snipers on the B Team. Indeed, this semi-documentary approach creates some question about the findings of the Warren Report that concluded beyond a doubt that a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, gunned down the President on November 22,1963.

The top-notch cast, headed by Academy Award winner Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan,and Will Greer as the conspirators, is seasoned with many familiar character actors populating the supporting roles. Producer Edward Lewis was no slouch either, having produced the volatile political thriller "Seven Days in May" with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, but the clincher is that former blacklisted Hollywood 10 scenarist Dalton Trumbo penned the script. Initially, Trumbo said that he did not believe in a conspiracy, but after he read several books on the assassination as well as the Warren Commission Report, he changed his opinion. No, "Executive Action" is not a conventional assassination thriller. Everything about it is pretty straightforward and suspense is lacking, but the audacious subject matter compensates for these departures from the norm. After all, we know that the assassins didn't miss and Kennedy died. Essentially, this is a clevely edited, quasi-documentary with a superb cast. Nevertheless, "Executive Action" did not stir up the controversy that the sensational Oliver Stone movie "JFK" with Kevin Costner generated many years later. Nonetheless, in light of everything, "Executive Action" constituted a bold move and there hasn't been a film comparable to it. Producer Edward Lewis claims that threats were made against him in an effort to dissuade him from making the picture. This was actor Robert Ryan's final film appearance. Randy Edelman wrote the haunting theme music. The film ends with the observation that an inordinate number of eye witnesses to the assassination died afterward of unusual causes. I remember seeing this movie when it came out originally in theaters.

FILM REVIEW OF ''ENEMY AT THE GATES'' (2001)

Watching "Quest for Fire" director Jean-Jacques Annaud's World War II spectacle "Enemy at the Gates" reminded me of the "Sgt. Rock" comic books that I used to peruse as an adolescent when I was growing up in Mississippi during the Cold War years of the 1960s. Those fiendishly duplicitous Nazis in "Sgt Rock" always set up ingenious ambushes, concealing themselves in places where the unsuspecting American G.I.s would least expect to spot them, such as either disabled tanks or the rubble of fallen buildings. "Enemy at the Gates" keeps that Nazi skullduggery intact. Although French director Annaud, whose credits include "Seven Years in Tibet" and "In the Name of the Rose," condemns the Nazi, he goes to heavy-handed lengths near the end to rekindle our antipathy to National Socialism. You'll know the scene when you see it. I hate movie critics would give away too much of a movie plot.

Anyway, the aristocratic Nazi Major Konig (Ed Harris of "Stepmom") dispatched to kill our heroic Red Army sniper disguises a department store mannequin in a gray Wehrmacht uniform with a rifle. Talk about symbolism!? Weren't the Wehrmacht supposed to be the good guys, and the Nazis the evil villains? Although this large-scale, $80 million, World War II epic glorifies the marksmanship of real-life Russian sniper Vassili Zaitsev (Jude Law of "Cold Mountain") who bagged 300 Germans, Annaud condemns the Soviet ideology that Vassili defended. At the same time, no matter how magnificent the set design, costume design, and overall production of the film remains, "Enemy at the Gates" is painfully predictable, though far better than its American counterpart "Saving Private Ryan." Indeed, while both films feature snipers, "Enemy" achieves far greater realism and far less sentimental loquacity than Steven Spielberg's highly-overrated D-Day saga. Nevertheless, "Saving Private Ryan" and "Enemy at the Gates" both celebrate the supremacy of the individual.

Anybody that marches into "Enemy at the Gates" with the impression that the Nazis will triumph is hopelessly naïve, so Annaud's cinematic strategy of making this movie into a cat-and-mouse duel between sympathetic snipers falters in the last half-hour when the Nazi foe unveils his murderous colors. Ultimately, "Enemy" shares more in common ideologically with director Howard Hawk's patriotic 1941 film biography about World War I Tennessee sharpshooter Alvin York in "Sergeant York." York captured hundreds of German troops single-handedly by using his sniping skills in World War I. Warner Brothers produced "Sergeant York" during the tumultuous days of 1941 to drum up patriotism among Americans and give them somebody to emulate. Similarly, Vassili rise to prominence as a Red Army war hero occurs when a young Communist political officer Danilov (Joseph Fiennes of "Elizabeth" and "Shakespeare in Love") suggests the way to inspire morale during among the infantry is to reinvent Vassili Zaitsev as a hero for the army to worship. One of the problems about being a film critic and film lover is that you spot some things that nobody else would care about, like Danilov's "Battleship Potemkin" eyewear. Real cute, Jean-Jacques.

Anybody that has read anything about the brutal battle of Stalingrad in 1942 knows that it emerges as one of the savage battles of all time. Imagine Dante's "Inferno" as the genuine article, and you have a fair idea how devastating the fighting was. "Enemy's" opening scenes show literally thousands of young Soviet troops piling aboard filthy railroad cattle cars and freighted to the war-ravaged city on the Volga where most would die. As "Enemy" unfolds, our protagonist, young Vassili Zaitsev, finds himself among scores of comrades as their officers issue rifles to every other soldier while those soldiers-in-between receive a mere magazine clip of bullets. Basically, the Soviets hurled more men into combat than they had rifles to arm! Sounds rather anti-Soviet to me. If an individual survived, he had to participate in the gory art of battlefield salvage. In other words, taking rifles off the dead! Anyway, Vassili charges off courageously into the fray with a fistful of bullets and bides his time until he can acquire a rifle. ("Enemy" loves to flashback to childhood memories of Vassili in the snowy Urals lining up a wolf in the cross-hairs as it attacks a staked out horse. The outcome of this flashback is pretty predictable, too.) Meanwhile, Soviet officers gun down without qualm any infantrymen that retreat from the Nazi horde. Neither side emerges from "Enemy" as white-washed as the American G.I.s in "Saving Private Ryan." The Soviets aren't quite as diabolical as the Nazis. After all, remember who won World War II. When we first meet Comrade Khrushchev (Bob Hoskins of "The Long Good Friday"), he forces a high-ranking Soviet general to commit suicide because he cannot repel the Nazi invaders. Usually, this scene appears in only Nazi war movies where suicide is deemed the simple way out.

Basically, "Enemy" chronicles not only the cat-and-mouse showdown between Nazi Major Konig and Vassili, but also a love triangle with Vassili, Danilov, and a beautiful Jewish girl, Tanya (Rachel Weisz of "The Mummy") whose parents died at the hands of the Nazis. Indeed, Annaud manages successfully to blow soap bubbles amid bullets. Imagine "Jules and Jim" in Stalingrad and you know what to expect. The outcome is a predictable as who survives the duel, but Annaud gives it the kind of noble gravity that it requires to rupture your tear ducts.

Guys who like war movies where you can see authentic vintage bombers dropping loads on the battleground, especially the Junkers 87, aka "Stuka" dive-bombers, will love this war movie despite its romantic interludes. Had Annaud gone against the grain on certain plot elements and characters, "Enemy at the Gates" might have qualified as a contemporary classic.