Warning. Spoilers regarding real-life figures lay within.

In his career-best, the 2006 war saga Letters from Iwo Jima (the companion to Flags of our Fathers), Clint Eastwood zeroed in on the story of a Japanese baker-turned-soldier named Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya). Fighting World War II in his reluctant, fragile skin and seeing it through his tender, humanistic perspective, Letters from Iwo Jima’s seemingly unremarkable Saigo manages the remarkable. He never fires a shot during his time on the frontlines. Both of Eastwood’s 2006 WWII films were soulful tales that dealt with moral challenges, paradoxes, and aftermaths of wartime while making a sturdy anti-war stand. That is not to say the films were didactic or loudly political –such a storytelling style would be outside of the territory of a man whose real-life political loyalties tend to be ambiguous at best– but Eastwood’s stand opposite war was agreeably visible.

The lead character of the start-to-finish heart-throbbing American Sniper, cowboy-turned-soldier Chris Kyle (sharply played by an intense Bradley Cooper), isn’t Saigo, however. He stands on the opposite extreme, being “the most lethal Navy SEAL in US history” with a confirmed 160 kills (!) during the Iraq War. And the unambiguous political message of Eastwood’s WWII films (even the anti-violence stance of his treasured Western Unforgiven) is not to be seen here, at least not blatantly; not in or through the eyes of the film’s characters or the evidently faithful telling of Kyle’s true wartime tales of horror. Meticulously directed with increasingly intensifying set pieces of missions in Iraq and clear-eyed exposés of Kyle’s at-home struggles and episodes of post-traumatic stress disorder, American Sniper nears some of Eastwood’s finest when it comes to purely proficient filmmaking that knowingly controls its audience’s every heart beat or sigh of relief, despite Jason Hall‘s at times thinning script or the occasionally misused score. But when it comes to the lessons of morality derived from a very recent slice of history, Eastwood and Hall keep themselves out of the picture, leaving the conclusion solely and entirely to the audience.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Like Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, which was controversially told through the eyes of its anti-hero Jordan Belfort, it’s possible to praise or condemn American Sniper’s decisive, intentional amorality, which unapologetically puts a certain ugly, masculine, aggressive way of Americanism to display. Whether it evokes pride via idolization or caution via straightforwardness will be up for debate, and will be in the eye of the beholder. This beholder leans toward the latter as the film’s aftereffect happened to come in the form of lamenting the cruelty of war, and gradual emotional devastation throughout.

American Sniper opens with Kyle on a heart-stopping mission, aiming his rifle from over a rooftop towards a woman and a young Iraqi child – possibly her son- carrying an explosive. As he struggles (and we barely breathe) through his dilemma (yes, the film’s first devastating moral challenge is facing the potential execution of a woman and a chil) another shot gets fired with a skillful flashback, as we find ourselves in one of Kyle’s childhood memories where he gets to learn how to hunt and shoot a rifle from his father in Texas. His father, despite his short screen time, proves to be the source of Kyle’s masculine pride and manly confidence. Raised with combative values and taught to always stand up for himself and his brother (being a watchful “sheepdog” is drilled into him), Kyle’s childhood gets mournfully juxtaposed against a nameless, ill-fated Iraqi child who’s guiltily, awkwardly doing what he’s been told while unknowingly being the target of a deadly weapon. In fact, the price local Iraqi children and their families pay become a recurring image in American Sniper, serving as one of the reasons why one can’t write the film off solely as patriotic propaganda, especially when we grimly realize these snipers’ circumstantial desensitization goes as far as crowning each other’s first kills with an off-putting “popping one’s cherry” reference. As their targets fall down routinely like villains of a computer game, watching American Sniper becomes an emotionally challenging, distressing, and demoralizing exercise, and not one that celebrates jingoism.

Though the real somber force of American Sniper is during the home scenes, while Kyle tries to return to normalcy in between his time overseas. Failing to connect with his wife Taya (Sienna Miller) and everyday life, Kyle joins those who fight a different, harrowing mind battle at home, craving to return to the battlefield (just like The Hurt Locker’s Willam James, a character who comes to mind often during this film). Paradoxically and unfortunately, this is where Hall’s script is at its flimsiest, focusing only on Kyle with a tight grip, while abandoning the rest of film’s characters, particularly Taya. We first get introduced to her as a cool, self-sufficient girl Kyle meets at a bar, and inexplicably find ourselves in the company of the worst kind of stock female: a wife who begs her husband to stay home with her and the kids, instead of putting his life in danger. Eastwood and Hall also gravely miss the mark during a scene where the husband and wife watch live images of 9/11 on TV, perhaps unintentionally but directly and falsely connecting the terrorist attacks to the war.

Despite these missteps, however, American Sniper is still a powerful, deftly pulled-off film on the aftermath of war as well as a competent character study of a single-minded man. Chris Kyle’s life and eventual murder (in the hands of a fellow veteran also suffering from PTSD) are ironically the very products of a system that favors toughness and resilience, while casually dismissing human weaknesses. And there’s no glorification in that plain fact.

Grade: B