Matt Taibi rips into 'American Sniper'

[Yosh]

Yeah, I'm late to the party.

From biographic info on Mr. Taibbi: "Taibbi has reported on politics, media, finance, as well as sports..."

Well, Lord knows, *that* makes him an expert on national military policy and the conduct of war.

"American Sniper" has its problems.

You want to see something closer to the "truth," watch "Restrepo." No lionizing, no political pontificating...just a slice of the war the way it's really fought.

[Thumper]

I have wanted to see Restrepo since I heard an interview with the directors on NPR right before it came out. However, I knew it wasn't going to be a happy family feel good movie and I'd have to find time to watch it myself. Still interested. And I was very saddened when the news came out that one of the directors, Tim Hetherington was killed reporting on the conflicts in Libya.

[SciFi Chick]

EDITED TO ADD: SPOILER ALERT! AN IMPORTANT SCENE IS REVEALED IN THE BELOW COMMENTARY.






I went to see American Sniper last night, and I feel comfortable saying that the criticisms I've read of that movie are complete and utter bullshit.

Disclaimer: I haven't read the book, and this is not a comment on who Chris Kyle was. I'm looking at the movie as though it was the usual "based on a true story", and I took that with a grain of salt.

One of the criticisms of the movie is that they are racist and call all the Iraqis savages. Simply not true. They establish more than once that the soldiers try to protect civilians. The difficulty is in determining who the "citizens" are. At one point, one of the terrorists takes a kid from his family and drills him to death. He tortures him and ultimately drills him in the skull before shooting his father and announcing that if anyone speaks to the U.S. soldiers, the same will happen to them. This causes Kyle to refer to this man who's nickname was The Butcher, as a savage. Imagine that.

He is presented as a conflicted person who just wants to do the right thing. He has something of a savior complex, in that he wants to save as many American soldiers as possible. This is what ultimately got him killed.

Contrary to popular belief, this movie doesn't celebrate the idea of war or the idea that Americans are perfect. I left the movie wondering if any of the critics I've been reading including the one from the OP have actually seen the movie! I personally will occasionally have an opinion about something I haven't seen - anything by Michael Moore for example. But I don't go out and professionally critique him either. I've gotten into discussions with squid about GamerGate, and he thinks I should play all the games before having an opinion. For me, this would be a lot like taking heroin before forming an opinion on whether it's not addictive, so I have to get my opinions from secondary sources. I'm not, however, going to go get hired by a magazine and start reporting on games I haven't played. I don't like seeing paid critics criticize a movie unfairly.

All in all, my own personal biggest criticism of the movie is that it was quite boring and I had a hard time staying awake. They could have easily cut forty minutes from the movie or picked different material to justify the length.

Edited to add: Obligatory comment about how they got the gun usage incorrect. I'm not as well versed as my husband, so I won't get into the details, but yeah, it was wrong.

[squ1d]

SPOILER ALERT

[SciFi Chick]

SPOILER ALERT

So sorry about that. I can't believe I did that. I've added a spoiler alert now.

[pumpkinpi]

I don't know if you are joking....but any time a movie is based on real events, I don't really consider anything a spoiler! Just my opinion.

Although, when I saw A Beautiful Mind I was blown away by the revelation, and was glad I hadn't been spoiled. Even though I had read the autobiography, and the issue was portrayed in a straightforward manner. I just had forgotten. But I won't go into details, so as not to spoil it for any who hasn't seen it...

[SciFi Chick]

I don't know if you are joking....but any time a movie is based on real events, I don't really consider anything a spoiler! Just my opinion.

Although, when I saw A Beautiful Mind I was blown away by the revelation, and was glad I hadn't been spoiled. Even though I had read the autobiography, and the issue was portrayed in a straightforward manner. I just had forgotten. But I won't go into details, so as not to spoil it for any who hasn't seen it...

I think he was referring to something in my post that got into very specific detail about how certain terrorists behaved. I doubt that was common knowledge.

[squ1d]

Yeah, that thing.

All good.

[grapes]

I don't know if you are joking....but any time a movie is based on real events, I don't really consider anything a spoiler! Just my opinion.

Although, when I saw A Beautiful Mind I was blown away by the revelation, and was glad I hadn't been spoiled. Even though I had read the autobiography, and the issue was portrayed in a straightforward manner. I just had forgotten. But I won't go into details, so as not to spoil it for any who hasn't seen it...

Well, the revelation in that movie was not present in the book, was it? I got the book somewhere...

In the same way, the movie about Chris Kyle is not the same as the book by Chris Kyle, and neither are the same as the life of Chris Kyle.

In the life of Chris Kyle, he seems to have lied much much more often than Brian Williams. I'm prone to doubting almost everything in the book by Chris Kyle, even extending to the body count. That doesn't mean the movie about Chris Kyle can't be magnificent and beautiful and inspiring, taken by itself.

[Yosh]

You tell me. Who preemptively invaded a country that hadn't attacked us yet, based on dubious and possibly falsified intelligence?

(Yes, I know; 20/20 hindsight. Even so.)

Factually speaking it was a UN coalition acting on a UN resolution. Just sayin. Yes, the U.S. had the largest number of troops and was the front runner. But, (I will repeat it because it is worth saying again) It was a UN backed coalition of countries that invaded and maintained a military presence in Iraq. And they were acting on a UN Resolution. Keep repeating that. Because you keep talking as if the U.S. acted unilaterally and without any regard to what the rest of the world was doing.

And as for your claim that the U.S. has committed war crimes I would suggest you research the definition. and look at what the U.S., the U.N., and the rest of the world consider to be a war crime. Because I think you are confusing your own decision that the war was immoral and therefore illegal with what constitutes a truly binding case of war crimes committed by a sovereign nation. Crimes committed by individuals may have been "war crimes" but to best of my knowledge the U.S. as a country has not committed a war crime. If you have factual proof that you can cite please do.

Late to the party as life has kept me busy. Not looking to resurrect this, I can wax philosophic on all the things we did wrong in Iraq.

However, the little canard about our "unprovoked" attack on poor, innocent Iraq is so much bullshit.

A minor history lesson:

At the end of Gulf 1, all that was signed between Iraq and the U.S. was a cease-fire. No peace terms were vetted, discussed, or agreed to.

Iraq had a decade-plus of flouting U.N. resolutions, beyond even the arguments about WMDs. It was an open secret (marvelous euphemism that) that Iraq was using money from both its legitimate "Oil for Food" sales, as well as black market sales of oil outside that framework, to rebuild its military. And couple of new palaces. And fill a couple of mass graves we discovered once we invaded; granted we didn't know *that* little tidbit in advance.

So, we didn't even need the arguable WMD assertions as a reason to start smacking Iraq again. We were already in a state of war with them. And had been.

Now...that doesn't excuse the fact that Bushco had no real plan, or clue for that matter, what to do when Saddam's gov't was toppled. And it doesn't excuse the fact that it diverted all the attention away from Afghanistan, which was/is the bigger problem. And...well, as I said, I can detail the failings of the Iraq war at length.

But the whole "preemptive invasion" canard is so much crap. Along with the other, oft-cited assertion...which was *not* floated here happily...that the invasion was "illegal."

[Cyborg Girl]

@Fisher: and OJ didn't do it because the court didn't convict him. Right.

@Yosh: first off, I said nothing about the Iraqi government being "innocent," nor did I imply it. Saddam Hussein was a bastard through and through, and deserved everything that he personally got. I do try to separate myself from blithering idiots like Jane Fonda, you know...

I'll concede that you may be correct about the war's legitimacy. It all seems a bit weaselly to me, but I'm no student of international law, etc.

What I won't concede is the number of civilian deaths the US incurred there, and the fucking callous attitude Americans show about it - even a lot of dyed-in-the-wool liberals, in my experience.

Edit: as far as "legality," I tend to think that's in the eyes of the beholder in international matters. Big players like the US can lord it over the less powerful nations with few repercussions.

[vendic]

Anyone that thinks the movie was a "feel good propaganda" movie would also consider Million Dollar Baby a heart lifting love story.