American Sniper

Is Clint Eastwood’s portrait of the late Navy SEAL Chris Kyle simple rah-rah, American flag-waving jingoism, as some are suggesting? Hardly. Yes, the Americans are unequivocally the good guys while the film is not much concerned with the Iraqi point of view. An aura of patriotic reverence permeates even the most wrenching moments. But the tone is anything but celebratory. Respectful, but not celebratory, and fittingly somber for what is ultimately a tragic story.

As has been prominently displayed in the movie’s marketing, Kyle (played by Bradley Cooper) served in Iraq and recorded more kills than any sniper in U.S. military history. Based on his memoir of the same name, the film depicts episodes from his experiences at war. The straight-up combat sequences are as flawlessly edited and convincing as any of the greatest war pictures. But it’s the less clear-cut scenes, as Kyle agonizes over whether or not the people in his sites (women and children included) are a threat, that are so searing and intense. At times, dehumanization is necessary, as the immediacy of danger leaves no time for pondering the morality of killing. That doesn’t make the act any less horrific, however, and even if he can’t, the audience certainly can see an almost measurable effect on the character’s psyche as the movie goes on.

Physically, Cooper embodies the role very well, but the real strength of his performance is in the subtleties. Outwardly, he never shifts from the strong, righteous American archetype that’s existed since John Wayne movies. It’s convincing, and yet, also quite clearly only skin-deep. It’s obvious underneath the warrior shell that he’s in torment. Things as small as a look on his face or a detached disinterest in social situations speak volumes.

Those demons come to the surface in the home front scenes, as Kyle finds difficulty in reconnecting with his wife (Sienna Miller) and being a father. Here, Eastwood utilizes every plot device he can to really nail the point. Sometimes it’s because of Cooper’s understated acting. In the same sense, Miller seems little more than constantly at her wit’s end, but that only highlights the distance between them. Other times, it isn’t subtle at all and uses obvious techniques and dramatic situations of dysfunction we’ve seen before. It’s almost blatantly emotionally manipulative, but it works all the same.

Eastwood likewise uses familiar archetypes to reel us in early. The training scenes aren’t much different from about a million other military movies. A short prologue between a young Kyle (Cole Konis) and his father (Ben Reed) is almost like a Western cliché (not to mention resembles a similar scene in the 2001 film Enemy at the Gates). It almost seems like it’s going to be a conventional genre picture until it hits us with the reality of warfare, and becomes instead an incredibly tense and emotional piece of work.

The Imitation Game

The Imitation Game doesn’t so much scratch as barely graze the surface of a very interesting and historically important individual. That’s not to say it’s a bad film, and it’s not. But it very noticeably lacks the weight, detail, and depth of character that such a subject probably warrants.

The subject is the British scientist and mathematician Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch), whose theories and experiments arguably laid the foundation of modern computer science. The movie focuses mostly on his work at England’s Bletchley Park during World War II, where he and others worked tirelessly to break the Nazis’ Enigma Code.

But, you wouldn’t know from the picture that they worked much at all, or even that there was a war going on. Most of the wartime content seems to be played for laughs, as the scholarly minds bicker and banter away while hitting dead end after dead end. Whenever a plot point or twist seems like it’s about to shift the tone, it turns out to be just a set-up for another laugh. It feels like a lazy school chum comedy, with the admiral in charge of things (Charles Dance) coming off less like a military man than the archetypical stuck-up dean. Even with newsreels and combat footage cutting in to remind us they’re still at war, there’s no sense of urgency or tension, and we don’t even get a cursory explanation of how they cracked Enigma. Instead, it happens in a standard Hollywood “eureka” moment.

As Turing, Cumberbatch embodies pop culture’s simplistic view of Asperger’s, which is to say the shy, lovably tactless nerd (basically, like Jim Parsons from The Big Bang Theory). Given the direction the picture chose, this is actually just fine, as he plays off his costars well and derives humor from many moments. Still, it’s a bit of a one-note performance, though this might be more the picture's fault than his.

The best moments are the chronological bookends to the World War II stuff, showing a young Turing (Alex Lather) as a troubled student, and his postwar prosecution for his homosexuality. In the former, we get at least some understanding of the pain Turing carries later, and the latter sees Cumberbatch finally drop his comedic shell and show some tortured emotional range. These two plots surprisingly tie into the wartime majority of the picture quite well, in spite of the stark difference in tone. Even though the film seems intent on making us laugh for much of its runtime, it finishes as an affecting, fairly tragic call for tolerance in Turing’s memory.

It works, and is ultimately a respectful tribute to the man. But even though it doesn’t really follow the life event bullet points structure of so many biopics, it has the same relatively low level of thoroughness. A deeper character study of Turing or a detailed, puzzling picture on breaking Enigma could have been so interesting. It’s just a little disappointing that the story was instead a springboard for a light comedic film instead.