[stuartj]

Originally Posted by sc_rufctr

I'm really looking forward to this. The Shorts look epic and I intend to see it as soon as it's released locally on the 24th of this month.

Snipers have always fascinated me. It must be one the most challenging jobs in the military.
Being based on Chris's real life service history should make this more than worthwhile and I'd expect Clint Eastwood has done a terrific job as director.
He seems to be getting better with age.

RIP Chris Kyle.

So how does it hold up? Is it worth seeing?

Snipers. Brave skilful courageous. Unless theyre an enemy, then they are murderous hidden cowards.

Mr Eastwoods latest is certainly getting some press.

Anything resembling balance and perspective is sacrificed in American Sniper to the more pressing needs of US propaganda, which holds that the guys who served in Iraq were the very best of America, men who went through hell in order to protect the freedoms and way of life of their fellow countrymen at home. It is the cult of the soldier writ large, men who in the words of Kyle (Bradley Cooper) in the movie “just want to get the bad guys.”

The ”bad guys” are, as mentioned, the Iraqis. In fact if you had just arrived in the movie theatre from another planet, you would be left in no doubt from the movie’s opening scene that Iraq had invaded and occupied America rather than the other way round.

Unsurprisingly, the real Chris Kyle was not as depicted by Clint Eastwood and played by Bradley Cooper. In his autobiography, upon which the movie is supposedly based, Kyle writes, “I hate the damn savages. I couldn’t give a flying f**k about the Iraqis.”

It is clear that the movie’s director, Clint Eastwood, when faced with the choice between depicting the truth and the myth, decided to go with the myth.

But it should come as no surprise, given that the peddling of such myths is the very currency of Hollywood. Over many decades the US movie industry has proved itself one of the most potent weapons in the armory of US imperialism, helping to project a myth of an America, defined by lofty attributes of courage, freedom, and democracy.

As the myth has it, these values, and with them America itself, are continually under threat from the forces of evil and darkness that lurk outwith and often times within. The mountain of lies told in service to this myth has only been exceeded by the mountain of dead bodies on the basis of it – victims of the carnage and mayhem unleashed around the world by Washington.


Hollywood uses ‘American Sniper’ to destroy history & create myth — RT Op-Edge