Why I Won't Be Seeing American Sniper

Our local movie theater has once again let me down. They've chosen, for whatever reason, not to show what is arguably the most important movie of the year: Selma. With racial issues at the forefront of our national conversation right now, this should be a picture everyone sees.  I wasn't completely surprised by our theater's decision: they did this a few years ago when Lincoln came out. It took them more than three months before they decided to show it, and only after it had won the Oscar and people complained. I'm not nearly as optimistic that they will ever get around to showing Selma.

We do, however, have American Sniper, a movie that I won't be going to see.

Before you break out the pitchforks, let me make one thing clear. I have nothing against those people who dedicate their lives to the military. I was a military brat; my father served in the military, as have several other family members, friends, and students. I've seen the sacrifices that they have made, the trauma they have gone through, the accomplishments they've had, the silence they keep.

However, none of that will make me go see American Sniper. From everything I've heard, Bradley Cooper gives an amazing performance as Chris Kyle, the Texas sniper who served four tours in Iraq. However, it's the things that Clint Eastwood deliberately left out of the movie, things that Kyle bragged about in his autobiography, that convinced me to not see this picture. If we want to tell the true story of our soldiers, we need to be completely honest--about everything.

Kyle lied in his autobiography. He said he was stationed on top of the Superdome after Katrina and picked off 30 looters. A lie. He said he killed a pair of car hijackers in Texas. Another lie.  He was also sued by Jesse Ventura after he claimed to have punched out the former Minnesota governor in a bar. Yet another lie. Ventura won the lawsuit. (Jarvis DeBerry goes into more detail on these lies in his article here.)

Kyle also bragged about the kills he made during his tours in Iraq. He enjoyed killing people. I'm not discounting the work he did: a sniper's work is to make things safer for other soldiers. I do have an issue with someone who loves killing other human beings.

It's obvious that Kyle had serious PTSD issues. I have no doubt that the lies he told come from a desire to remain a "hero" once he was back on American soil, but that doesn't excuse the lies, nor the omission of this part of Kyle's story in the movie. Manipulating a story that much gives people a false impression of what Kyle did and how he lived his life (or what he said about his life), especially when many people take these stories as "absolute truth" rather than a fictionalized account of what happened.*

I'm sure American Sniper will win Best Picture. It should be Selma.



*I know Selma has been accused of historical inaccuracies as well. However, there's a difference between showing LBJ as reluctant on civil rights, and ignoring major lies in an individual's autobiography.