Réalisation:
Clint EastwoodScénario:
Jason HallPhotographie:
Tom SternMusique:
Joseph S. DeBeasiActeurs·trices:
Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, Luke Grimes, Jake McDorman, Cory Hardrict, Kevin Lacz, Navid Negahban, Keir O'Donnell, Brian Hallisay, Sammy Sheik (plus)VOD (4)
Résumés(1)
Tireur d'élite des Navy SEAL, Chris Kyle est envoyé en Irak dans un seul but : protéger ses camarades. Sa précision chirurgicale sauve d'innombrables vies humaines sur le champ de bataille et, tandis que les récits de ses exploits se multiplient, il décroche le surnom de "La Légende". Cependant, sa réputation se propage au-delà des lignes ennemies, si bien que sa tête est mise à prix et qu'il devient une cible privilégiée des insurgés. Malgré le danger, et l'angoisse dans laquelle vit sa famille, Chris participe à quatre batailles décisives parmi les plus terribles de la guerre en Irak, s'imposant ainsi comme l'incarnation vivante de la devise des SEAL : "Pas de quartier !" Mais en rentrant au pays, Chris prend conscience qu'il ne parvient pas à retrouver une vie normale. (texte officiel du distributeur)
(plus)Critiques (11)
Une belle saloperie propagandiste ! J’ose affirmer que même mes copains de classe qui ont échoué au bac remarqueraient que les choses sont présentées de façon absolument partisane. J’espère que Clint Eastwood s’est assis avec McCain et les autres cinglés républicains, qu’ils se sont unis bras dessus, bras dessous, qu’ils ont mis la main sur le cœur et qu’ils ont déclaré à quel point les Américains étaient les plus braves, les plus combatifs et les plus légendaires, qu’ils n’avaient que de bonnes intentions et qu'ils propageaient la démocratie dans le monde. Parce que pour moi, quelqu’un qui tue cent soixante personnes n’est pas un héros, peu importe les circonstances. Pour moi, les héros, ce sont Médecins sans frontières, les gens qui s’efforcent de recoller les morceaux après les conséquences d’une guerre, mais certainement pas ceux qui en créent. Ce genre de clichés pourris où l’on peut couper le son des scènes soi-disant tendues et doubler les dialogues de chaque personnage ne valent pas la peine d’être vus et encore moins d’être récompensés. American Sniper est encore un cran plus mauvais que le soporifique Foxcatcher. Et moi, je perds encore plus ma motivation de regarder les films nominés aux Oscars cette année, parce que c’est un défilé de merdes, avec seulement The Grand Budapest Hotel et Imitation Game comme candidats respectables.
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Cooper vise haut, il veut la reconnaissance et les Oscars. Et il a visiblement attiré Eastwood en échange d’une somme élevée. Sinon, Clint ne se serait pas lancé là-dedans, le scénario n'offre pas beaucoup de place à son talent de narrateur(les scènes émotionnelles avec sa femme pourraient être faites par n'importe qui). La simplicité et la franchise du film, qui n'apporte rien de nouveau sous le casque et s'appuie uniquement sur le potentiel du destin réel de Chris Kyle, d'un côté réjouit (le film est captivant sans trop exiger de la part du spectateur), mais d'un autre côté, il ne mérite pas d'Oscars en raison de l'utilisation de clichés et de l'absence de particularité (ce que possédait Démineurs, qui était construit de la même manière mais moins prévisible). Si l'Académie ne veut pas l'admettre ouvertement c'est qu'il s'agit davantage de politique que de cinéma. La scène d'action centrale (le boucher+perceuse+garçon) est habilement montée. En revanche, la deuxième moitié aurait besoin d'être raccourcie.
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Eastwood's precise shot, which is likely to be mistaken for pathos when defending the American way of thinking, stands out above all. This is due to the fact that, despite a significant part of the runtime being spent on the battlefield, it manages to retain a civilian atmosphere, rather giving Kyle's extraordinary "skill" lip service because, at his core, the protagonist remains that pure American redneck who, in Cooper's excellent, paunchy Texan delivery, blathers on about defending the country, and yet you know he means it with unapologetic sincerity; its length and the empty brothers storyline are the only things that the film can be faulted for. Even J. Edgar wanted to look like this.
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The film is divided into two parts. One takes place in Iraq and the other in the homeland. Leaving aside the fact that Bradley Cooper plays his role with absolute precision, I must add that everything else is just plain wrong. There is very little going on in Iraq. There are a few key scenes here, but that’s definitely not enough for a good film. Take the first scene, for example. It is a masterpiece in and of itself. However, the two parts intersect in the most suspenseful moment and suddenly Clint makes a cutto the protagonist’s past life in the States. The tension rapidly drops and we’re left with no choice but to watch why Chris left for Iraq to begin with. After a while, the pace picks up and you suddenly realize this movie has zero emotion. Chris is in America, then in Iraq, then returns to America and ends up in Iraq again. All of this with no emotions, unlike in Hurt Locker which worked pretty well in this respect. Here I had a problem watching it to the end. Simply put, I was disappointed. I expected American Sniper to be something in the vein of contemporary war films such as Hurt Locker or Jarhead, but what I got was a completely routine job, which engages neither with its story nor with the locations.
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A brutal, action-packed, powerful, emotional, properly American patriotic and simply beautifully retold story of a legendary sniper in an actual war. The film is very action packed, there is frequent gunfire, the pacing is decent, the dialogue is classy, the cinematography is slick, Bradley Cooper is perfect, Mustafa the sneaky Arab sniper and Cooper’s biggest rival is also brilliant, he gives a flashback to Enemy at the Gates. Perhaps the only representative of this year's Oscars that really deserves it. I liked Lone Survivor a bit more, but this is also a very solid and engaging affair 80%
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Biography of the sniper from Texas, Chris Kyle, who had about 150 kills scratched into his rifle stock. Eastwood has become a hitmaker in his latter years (90 million views over one weekend!) and a very moderate war movie director. Not so many kills as such, they are restrained, realistic and not even Kyle is counting (he’s so cool). Probably because we all know what a farce Iraq was, there’s no delving into politics. Simply a classic pursuit movie with ragheads with a polite duel going on in the background. The picture pretends that sniping itself isn’t playing the main role, but in fact it’s a conflict with Mustafa and the hunt for Butcher that help the viewer differentiate between the separate tours. The classic development of the Navy Seals and is all too familiar, thank you very much Eastwood for presenting it in more entertaining form. Cooper is very convincing in his transformation from man to robot and back again, at crucial moments he doesn’t act like a hero, but like a psychopath. His dead soul is visible in his cold blue eyes (that’s why Kyle wears sunglasses almost all the time). Movies like Hurt Locker don’t have this, that’s probably why this movie works much better. Emotions come across artificial, but on the other hand the finale works well, sad, even though the main message becomes a little blurred. P.S.: I’m a great fan of the Punisher, so I seriously enjoyed the scene about the “graphic novel". The armor and magazines with the skull stencil looked damn good. Hooyah!
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Patriotism is boring. The psychological portrayal of the main character is average. It is neither a high-octane war action like Black Hawk Down, nor a minimalist, intimate piece like Zero Dark Thirty. American Sniper doesn't impress you with anything, except maybe how flat and predictable it ultimately is. It's as if Clint Eastwood had no room for any of his trademarks. You won't feel or resonate with the shots, nor with the dialogues spoken by characters with whom you don't empathise or bear their "burden" on the screen – except perhaps the leading duo. Thumbs up for not being afraid to depict child violence and a few solid action scenes that intertwine with the boring ones that lack dramatic dynamism and better structure – Ridley Scott could give a few lessons – the hell in Mogadishu was much more tangible.
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A pleasantly unbiased, melancholic view of a man who was no great thinker, but who meant well. American Sniper does not glorify Chris Kyle, but rather makes him a sad victim of a cruel war and his own noble need to help others. I honestly admit that I was afraid that this would be the second Machine Gun Preacher, from which I was very sick the other day, but fortunately my fears were misplaced. Clint Eastwood also managed to keep most of the dangerous clichés lurking around the corner, and filmed the story with his usual coolly dispassionate naturalism. My only regret is that the film followed a template that I have seen many times before and that it is not a bit more exceptional in its treatment. But I didn't expect the ending (because I knew nothing about the real fate of the main character) and it really touched me.
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American Sniper is not about physical suffering in the middle of a battle zone, but rather about the diametrically opposed perspectives that the war in Iraq is subjected to, both from the unsuspecting American public and the direct participants in the bloody conflict, as well as the questionable motivations that drive many young Americans toward their dream of "serving the country”. Eastwood works with a very generic cinematic equation, with his protagonist coming into the war full of enthusiasm and patriotic oaths, only to leave as a broken man who has lost his illusions of honour and the existence of goodness. But what elevates the film to above average is its undisguised aversion to jingoism, which is a flimsy band-aid for doing or perhaps returning to evil, the natural civility of emotion that makes the war and psychological levels blend beautifully, and of course Clint's formal genius, which he still retains even in his 80s. Given the many Oscar nominations, one might think that Americans have a soft spot for Eastwood, but watching American Sniper, as with Gran Torino or Million Dollar Baby, I realized that the popularity is well deserved. 80%
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An extended mix of contemporary male cluelessness, declining machismo, and the search for idols. It's a real shame that Cooper's decidedly above-average acting flounders in a film where every five minutes is about something different, and individual scenes end where there should be a confrontation that could at least reveal the protagonist's questionable temperament. There's also not much else to do when you've got the national hero's dad up your ass, making sure the image of his deified son matches his Texas fantasies, and Republican zombie Eastwood behind the camera. The hero's wife is a devastating parody, who right in keeping with the optics of the Southern redneck occasionally threatens to pack up the kids if she doesn't get her way, but if you're able to actively ignore her, she'll still wait for you with open arms, because that's just how women are. It'll get rednecks across the breadth of the Confederate states to join the military, so it lived up to expectations, but otherwise it's a bigoted tunnel of shame that only scores points for Cooper's performance and not messing around, including with dying and tortured children. Arab children, rather. PS: formally it holds to certain standards and it's certainly not terrible. There's even a couple of delicious scenes (the storm in the desert), but next to the formal qualities of Green Zone, The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty, and The Kingdom, there’s absolutely no reason to add points for that.
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I was expecting the film to be about something else, mainly because I didn't want to see anything about it beforehand. It intrigued me how it turned out to be perhaps even surprising in the end, but on the other hand, Clint can't be faulted for mostly avoiding pathos - except for the shots of the real people that follow before the credits and during them. Otherwise, it's a well-directed film, where especially the war scenes are incredible.
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Annonces