Over four tours of duty during the Iraq War, Navy SEAL Chris Kyle became the most legendary sniper in U.S. history, racking up 160 kills (earning him the fitting nickname “Legend” among his fellow soldiers). Clint Eastwood‘s haunting  American Sniper at first chronicles the damage Kyle (played by a bulked-up, Southern twangy Bradley Cooper) inflicts upon enemies centered in the scope of his rifle, playing out like a slightly less-suspenseful Hurt Locker. But as the film drifts into its second half, it does something better than Hurt Locker did: we see the damage those 160 kills have on Kyle’s psyche, as Eastwood’s ground combat thriller transforms into a riveting paranoia piece and an intimate cautionary tale about the dehumanizing and mentally deteriorative effects of the horrors of the battlefield.

Cooper at first plays Kyle (who died before the film’s completion) like a big, burly bundle of stereotypes; he’s a beer-swiggin’ rodeo cowboy, a Southern charmer (we see him pick up dubious girl at a bar, Taya, played by Sienna Miller, later his wife), and a bigoted patriot (he calls Iraqis “savages”). He’s the poster child for down-home Americana, but what’s interesting about Kyle is how all of these traits inform his role as a sniper. We follow him from the moment he enlists in the military, and what’s immediately evident is that his single-minded dedication to his country makes him perfect behind the rifle; his scope is as unshakeable and narrow as his worldview and patriotism.

The series of raids, gunfights, and rooftop stakeouts that make up the first half of the movie are well-made, if a bit repetitive. Several times we see Kyle line up victims in his sights as the question of “to kill or not to kill” chews up his insides. Cooper is fantastic at communicating the unbearable weight of playing god with people’s lives; on two separate occasions he’s finds a child at the end of his barrel. He spares one, pulls the trigger on the other. He trembles and holds back tears for both. A somewhat overarching narrative eventually emerges about a deadly street boss called “The Butcher” and an Iraqi sniper with skills that rival Kyle’s, but the truth of the matter is, everything we see in Iraq is ultimately only meant to set up the real meat of the story, which is what we see when Kyle returns home to Taya and his son.

Eastwood and Cooper’s depiction of post-traumatic stress disorder is superb; back at the Kyle household we see the war-torn soldier sitting in front of his TV, staring blankly at the screen as people bustle in the backyard for his young son’s birthday party. Eastwood cuts to behind Kyle’s back to reveal that the TV is, in fact, not even turned on. It’s a chilling image of a lost soul dismantled. Late in the film we see a massive dust storm  swallowing the streets of Fallujah, an injured Kyle racing to catch up with his comrades as they speed away in a Humvee. In a jaw-dropping shot from the perspective of the vehicle we see Kyle desperately reaching his arm out to his friends, barely visible in the dark cloud of dust. His humanity is hanging by a thread, nearly swallowed up by the void. The effect Kyle’s four tours have on his family isn’t handled as well. The film is told exclusively from his perspective, so while his high anxiety is expressed incredibly well cinematically, Taya’s anguish is communicated through rote dialogue about her husband not really being there, even when he’s present in the household.

As in Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers, Eastwood explores the complexities and ambiguities of violence and the toll taking lives takes on the mind. Avoided are the intricacies of war politics; this is a story about one soldier, what he did and what he saw. The biggest thing Eastwood and screenwriter Jason Hall get right is how honest they are about the more unflattering aspects of Kyle’s character. He’s portrayed in a less than flattering light quite often, though his heroism is beyond question by the end of the film.

But American Sniper questions popular ideas about heroism in interesting ways most military movies don’t. While Kyle’s brothers in his platoon praise him as a hero for thinning enemy numbers, he clearly isn’t proud about that accomplishment; those 160 lives follow him around every day. What’s heroic about Kyle is his refusal to lose himself completely. Prior to his death last year, he had rebuilt himself to where he could be an attentive, loving father and husband, and even offered his services to aid fellow veterans in need of mental rehabilitation themselves. Tragically, Kyle’s life was taken by one of the veterans he was trying to help, a moment we don’t see on screen in good taste.

Originally published on Dec. 23, 2014.

Though we are only a few months away from the Holiday film season, it’s still a pretty foggy picture on which films will be the biggest contenders for this year’s Oscars. Films like Into the Woods and Gone Girl may be considered favorites at this point, but the wide-open field just got another wildcard with Clint Eastwood‘s American Sniper, as it was recently announced that the film will open on Christmas Day.

Though Eastwood hasn’t directed a film that was nominated for Best Picture since 2007’s Letters from Iwo Jima, American Sniper may reverse that trend. His return to the war genre stars Bradley Cooper as real-life Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, whose long military career included 150 confirmed kills, the most in American military history. Based on Kyle’s memoir, the film will most certainly play as a riveting epic with human interest appeal.

With the Christmas release, it should not only get the attention of awards voters, but also audiences — paired against comedies Hot Tub Time Machine 2, The Interview and family films Into the Woods and Paddington, it will fill the blockbuster slot on the schedule.

A little more on the biopic spectrum than a lavish stage-to-screen production as most cinematized musicals tend to be, Jersey Boys evokes the same nostalgia putting on a record of The Four Seasons would illicit but tends to lose steam between musical numbers. Clint Eastwood, as beloved as he is, shows his age somewhat in this clean-cut adaptation.

Plucking his lead actor straight off the stage, Jersey Boys stars Tony award-winning John Lloyd Young as Frankie Valli, Vincent Piazza as Tommy DeVito, Erich Bergen as Bob Gaudio, Michael Lomenda as Nick Massi, and Christopher Walken as mob boss Gyp DeCarlo. Starting on the streets of Jersey where the boys began, the film uses the same narration-driven model as the musical, allowing it’s characters to speak directly to the camera as they describe their struggle from street-hooligans to one of America’s most beloved and innovative musical acts. Young Frankie Castelluccio hangs with a tough crowd, especially Tommy DeVito, who, although he teaches Frankie about music and encourages his talent, has a penchant to get into trouble and is in and out of jail at a young age. Despite the rough people around him, people seem to want to protect Frankie and his talent, keeping him off the streets and setting him up with singing gigs. Tommy, Frankie, and Nick struggle with making anything of their musical act (nobody’s looking for trios anymore says Tommy), but when they meet Bob Gaudio, a songwriting hit machine, they finally have the missing magical element.

The film navigates their career keeping up energy with each ah-ha moment of each hit song’s inception and then race to the top of the charts. The more serious in-between scenes, Frankie’s ill-advised romance and marriage to Mary Delgado (Renee Marino), the mounting debt and drama caused by Tommy, the ambition of Bob as he forms an alliance with Frankie, the decline of marriages, the struggle of touring life — all suck the energy right out of the film. The pressures of success are familiar territory and the only thing that is remarkably different, as the group’s tension builds toward an inevitable breakup, is Frankie’s role as a lead singer never inflated his ego or led to their decline, in fact his forgiveness and gracious attitude toward his friends and his sense of loyalty are painted as absolutely saint-like.

The Four Season’s notorious songs such as “Sherry”, “Walk Like a Man”, “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and “December 1963 (Oh What a Night)” are impossible not to tap a toe to, to the point where its easy to be distracted away from how deflated the film really is. The end builds well, past all the troubles the group, especially Frankie, have experienced, to a fantastic rendition of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” but then undoes (once again) its good work by showing an overly sentimental ending that commits what I consider to be a cardinal sin of biopics in attempting to provide closure by showing it’s subjects years later, bygones being bygones.

Throw in awkward curtain-call style ending credits and the film just proves that stage and screen hold their respectable differences for good reasons. There will always be charms that one can hold over the other. Eastwood tried a bit too hard to mix those charms, only proving further that both film and stage hold their own artistic purposes. Jersey Boys is a good film, but not a great musical adaptation.