Iron Eagle (1986)

Lamar from Revenge of the Nerds and a bunch of precocious teenagers rescue Tim Thomerson from certain death at the hands of Poirot!

Iron Eagle is a 1986 film directed by Sidney J Furie and starring Jason Gedrick and Louis Gossett Jr.

Even for an action movie made smack bang in the middle of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, Iron Eagle pushes the boundaries of ridiculousness. It shamelessly rides on the coat tails of the far superior Top Gun, it shits all over a fictional Middle Eastern country, the action scenes are haphazardly staged and filmed (seriously, don’t attempt a drinking game where you take a shot every time there’s a continuity error – you’ll die of alcohol poisoning), and the story is far-fetched in the extreme.

Yet I can’t help but love the shit out of this movie. I think it’s quite possibly the greatest thing on the face of the Earth.

Strangely, the most well-filmed action sequence is one of the least important but most ridiculous. It’s right at the start, where they establish what a good pilot Doug Masters (Jason Gedrick) is by having him race a dirt bike in his Cessna. Yes, that’s not a typo. Plane vs motorbike. It’s actually a really good sequence, featuring a light aircraft being flown at insanely low altitude through canyons. It’s so well filmed it doesn’t jazz with the later flying sequences featuring jet fighters. They are so different it’s almost as if one director filmed this sequence, then read the rest of the script and ran away.

What I love most about this film is that despite the idiocy of the script it tries valiantly to be sincere. Doug’s father (the always awesome Tim Thomerson) has been shot down and taken prisoner. So we get these hopelessly emotional scenes at the start where Doug pleads with some generic Army guy that the suits in Washington are doing nothing to save his good old Dad from the clutches of a generic Middle Eastern dictator (played by none other than David ‘Poirot’ Suchet), a guy who is obviously based on Ghaddafi (or however you spell it).

What makes these silly scenes so much funnier is that right after one of them, Doug decides to attend his high school prom so we get some woeful scene featuring Lamar from Revenge of the Nerds busting some moves on the dance floor (the film is also casually racist – only the black guy knows how to dance).

So of course because the Government is powerless to intervene, Doug and his loyal band of teenage army brats must take matters into their own hands. They are assisted by the always reliable Louis Gossett Jr, playing Chappy, a retired army pilot whose motivation for wanting to help seems to boil down to some teary, badly-written scene where he reminisces about some kid he saw killed in Vietnam…or something. Those damn rice paddies have a lot to answer for.

This leads to a montage where we see the kids breaking into various air force bases and classified documents rooms to get some blueprints and maps and also somehow manage to steal two fully armed F-16 fighter jets. They make it seem as easy as chucking some packets of gum down your pants and waddling out of the corner store. There’s even a scene where two of them, dressed in some kind of weird Village People disguises, distract some guards at the base by throwing fire crackers into a 44 gallon drum. And no, they aren’t killed in a hail of machine gun fire, it’s played for a gag.

The whole ‘planning stage’ of the rescue operation is pretty much played for laughs. They kick about in a clubhouse, play tricks on hapless army guys, do silly voices and then all of a sudden the film shifts back into serious mode as Doug and Chappy take to the skies.

Oh I need to backtrack to one of my other favourite things about this film. You see, Doug is only a good pilot as long as he has 80’s rock music blasting on his Walkman. Again, that’s not a typo and no, I’m not kidding. He can’t fire missiles straight unless he has his music on. It’s possibly the greatest way I’ve ever seen songs shoehorned into an action film.

And speaking of tapes… Chappy’s made these ‘motivational’ tapes for Doug to listen to on the flight over. What is hilarious is that he seems to have made one for every possible eventuality. There’s one in the event of his death. There’s one for if they make it. One for if they don’t. One for when he’s rescued his dad. I just picture Doug fumbling with them in the cockpit, squinting at the labels Chappy’s put on them *click* IF YOU GET SHOT DOWN “uhhh dammit wrong tape!” They all pretty much say the same thing anyway: Don’t worry, it’ll be all right, have faith in yourself, kid. Chappy’s like a cross between Mr Miyagi and Yoda.

And getting back to continuity errors, one of my favourites comes toward the end when Doug decides to blow up one of Poirot’s oil refineries. You see him fly over what is quite obviously a water plant. And for some reason this makes Poirot agree to let Tim Thomerson go, to meet Doug on a tarmac. Of course Poirot thinks he’s setting a trap because Doug will obviously have to land in order to pick up his dad, but never fear as this gives Doug a chance to use his secret weapon: some ridiculous bomb called the “Hades” which puts up some kind of wall of fire between him and bad guys so he can take off.

The film just keeps piling on the stupidity. We see the bad guys rip tarps off some anti-aircraft guns. It’s edited and scored like an “uh oh” moment, but Doug then blows the guns up before they have a chance to do anything.

Ah heck, I love this film. I love its blatant geographical and continuity errors (look out for Doug’s dad’s plane at the start – missiles loaded under its wings appear and disappear at random). I love its shameless pro-Americanism (at one point Lamar even remarks that the bad guys don’t stand a chance because ‘Ronny Ray-Gun’ is in charge). I love the silly attempts at emotion and Chappy’s self-help tapes. And I love that the bad guy is a British guy playing a Middle Eastern guy speaking with a Latin accent. Jesus I miss the 80's.

Gladiator (2000)

Russell Crowe tries to change his name to 'Gladiator', Richard Harris makes Joaquin Phoenix mad, and Germans never got the 'don't kill the messenger' memo.

Gladiator is a 2000 epic directed by Ridley Scott and starring Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix and Djimon Hounsou.

The best part of owning the ‘Extended Edition’ blu ray of Gladiator for me is the introduction by Ridley Scott. I find it hilarious. I don’t think he could sound less enthusiastic about it. The entire speech just screams ‘Universal made me do this’. And Universal, as if as some kind of weird punishment, makes this introduction impossible to avoid. It automatically plays every time you watch the film.

The fact the extended edition always begins with the director telling you that he got it right the first time ends up being remarkably apt, because he did. None of the extra scenes really add much to the film. It certainly isn’t ruined by the added 17 minutes or so, but the theatrical cut is a great example of it being unnecessary to fix something that isn’t broken.

Anyway, whatever version you prefer, Gladiator is an excellent film.

The opening battle sequence, where Maximus’ (Crowe) army confronts the Germanic warriors, is expertly staged and superbly filmed and scored. Beginning any ‘epic’ with the massive set piece battle has become somewhat of a cliché these days, but it began here, and it hasn’t really been topped. I love the lead up to the action. From Maximus quietly watching the sparrow launch itself off a branch amidst the smoke of the burning oil, to the way his dog runs alongside his horse as he gallops through the lines of his men, to the ‘message’ the Germans deliver in the form of the Roman messenger being returned minus his head, I love everything about it.

One of the things I like most about this film is the fact it pretty much lacks subtlety of any kind. Almost everything about Gladiator is overt. Ridley Scott directs the film as spectacle in the image of the old greats like Ben Hur and Spartacus and The Fall of the Roman Empire. The visuals of ancient Rome, despite being a bit turn-of-the-century clunky CGI, are really impressive. Scott's trademark attention to period detail is on fine display.

And I like that Russell Crowe gives Maximus some depth. He begins the film the honourable, revered general leading his men into battle, then becomes the bitter vengeful slave and finally the balls-to-the-wall “are you not entertained?” gladiator.

I do like one of the film’s only moments of subtlety though – it’s Maximus' quiet conversation with Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris) at the beginning, where he describes his home in Spain. Crowe is excellent in this scene - he is by turns stoic and longing.

The other performance I like is Joaquin Phoenix as Commodus. Phoenix is a very impressive actor. His Commodus is evil in the best way – he’s unpredictable. He’s one of those people you’d feel really uncomfortable being alone with. You could never relax because he always looks like he’s just about to unhinge and start ranting and snapping like a rabid animal. He plays some scenes like a hurt sheep, but there’s always the menace of the wolf lurking just beneath the surface. He actually benefits from one of the scenes added to the extended edition – where he confronts a marble bust of his dead father and begins hacking at it with a sword. He's both pathetic and incredibly threatening.

All the performances are pretty spot on. I particularly like Maximus’ friend, Cicero (Tommy Flanagan). He’s that quietly loyal-to-the-bitter-end sidekick to the main hero that I always enjoy in films like this.

Anyway, this film will go down in movie history as accomplishing two things – firstly, it made Russell Crowe a star. And secondly, it made swords and sandals epics cool again. Both of which were more than welcome with me. Two and a half hours well spent.

The Tree of Life (2011)

Sean Penn talks to himself because Brad Pitt is his dad and he’s messed up because his little brother just died…okay….wait a sec, now there’s galaxies exploding and some dinosaurs…did I just lean on the remote or something?

The Tree of Life is a 2011 film directed by Terrence Malick and starring Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain and Sean Penn.

I first saw this film on a date with my then-girlfriend. About half way through she asked me “what is this movie about?” I meant to reply, “I don’t know,” but I had a Freudian-slip and instead said, “I don’t care.”

And that pretty much sums up my reaction to this film.

The best scenes by far are the ones involving Brad Pitt’s character, “Mr O’Brien”, interacting with his three sons. These are without doubt the scenes that make the most sense. I like that Mr O’Brien is never portrayed as an ogre. He is very hard on his boys but you understand why. He wants them to grow up strong, and not abandon their dreams like he did. You also get the feeling that this is just how he was raised he has no other notions of what a man or a father should be.

This brings me to the central theme of the film which is Nature vs Grace. Mr O’Brien represents Nature, while their soft, welcoming mother, played by Jessica Chastain, represents Grace. At the beginning of the film we’re told Nature or Grace is a choice, however as the film goes on we realise it’s not that simple (nothing about this film is simple…but I’ll get to that in a bit). Eldest son Jack (Hunter McCracken, later played as an adult by Sean Penn) says toward the end of the film that influences from his mother and father “wrestle inside him” and always will.

I think my initial mistake was trying to figure this film out. Once my brain recovered from the ensuing meltdown I decided to watch it again but treat it like a painting. I just sort of looked at it, and didn’t really try to make much sense of what was happening before my eyes. I enjoyed it much more this way.

That said I don’t actually enjoy this film that much. The biggest issue for me is that by making the film so incredibly obscure, Terrence Malick manages to make all the characters strangely distant. I just wasn’t invested in any of them. There’s the trademark Malick voice overs, but it has nowhere near the emotional impact of say, the soldiers meditating on life and death in The Thin Red Line. It really doesn’t have much impact at all.

I’ve heard this film referred to as ‘pretentious’, but I don’t think it is. I just think that without any kind of real narrative, it just sort of fails to achieve what it seems to set out to do. It’s actually a lot more like a really long music video than a film.

The visual stuff is all very cool and some of it is downright beautiful. But my favourite moment is actually a very small scene where Jessica Chastain is walking along a street with her sons and as she pauses for a moment, a butterfly lands on her outstretched hand. There's something really amazing and spontaneous about it. That single visual gave me a much more profound sense of Grace than any other single moment in the film.

Still, as I mentioned before, my reaction again this time around was just to sort of shrug and think “well, it looked nice, but I still just don’t care.” Terrence Malick reminds me a lot of Stanley Kubrick. If I was going to compare this film to any other, it would be 2001: A Space Odyssey. Both are oddly meditative, visually stunning, and really, really strange.

Up in the Air (2009)

George Clooney does some really awkward dance moves, the creepy stalker chick from Two and Half Men marries the disabled war veteran who beat up Robert Downey Jr in Due Date, and lots of hardworking Americans get canned.

Up in the Air is a 2009 movie directed by Jason Reitman and starring George Clooney, Vera Farmiga and Jason Bateman.

Despite being a George Clooney fan I avoided this film for a long time because I thought it was the type of movie I despise – the sort of film The Simpsons makes fun of; films about “people coming to terms with things.”

I knew the general gist – Clooney plays a man whose job (a corporate asshole hired by employers to fire people) keeps him travelling. He lives out of a suitcase, barely sees his sisters and has no attachments besides a mutually beneficial loyalty to his boss (a wonderfully sleazy Jason Bateman). I figured it was about Clooney’s character finally ‘finding his feet’ and the woman of his dreams yadda yadda.

And for the most part that’s what this film is. It’s predictable, sometimes corny, rarely laugh-out-loud funny, but watchable due to Clooney and Vera Farmiga, who plays Alex; a woman seemingly as vacuous as Clooney with whom he begins a casual relationship.

But then it redeems itself at the end when it has Clooney doing the ‘coming to terms with things’ moment – showing up on Alex's doorstep. It’s set up like a happy ever after moment but instead he’s greeted with the cold reality that she is married with kids and has been lying to him.
I especially like the way she essentially ‘fires’ him in the same passive aggressive way he’s been firing people throughout the film.

The film has a really obvious metaphor that I would normally pretentiously sneer at, but this time it actually made me laugh (maybe it was the sleep medication I was on – which clearly wasn’t working). After spruiking idiotic self-help seminars on how to ‘empty the backpack’ of your life – free yourself from the baggage of friends, family, and possessions – Clooney’s character is forced to carry around a cheesy cardboard cut-out of his sister and her fiancé that juts out of his carefully packed carry on suitcase (she’s asked him to take lame tourist selfies with it at various landmarks he visits on his travels). The metaphor is as subtle as a knee to the groin, but director Jason Reitman somehow makes it work. I guess growing up with Ivan Reitman as your dad would instil a certain deftness at juggling sentimentality and comedy.

What I liked most about the film was that Clooney’s character essentially doesn’t change. His character arc is a full 360 – he ends the film the way he began; groundless and happy to be. The film essentially employs the rationale that made Seinfeld so great – the philosophy that good comedy should have ‘no hugging and no learning’. Works for me. Two sleep-deprived hours well spent.

The Hitcher (1986)

A young man gets framed for some gruesome murders all because his stupid brother can’t answer his goddamn phone, and after all these years I still have no idea what the ‘C’ stands for in C. Thomas Howell.

The Hitcher is a 1986 thriller directed by Robert Harmon and starring Rutger Hauer, C. Thomas Howell and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

There is a clue to what this movie's all about in a scene at the very beginning where Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell) asks John Ryder (Rutger Hauer) "what do you want?" as Ryder holds a flick knife blade to his eye. Ryder replies "I want you to stop me."

Robert Harmon directed this thriller written by Eric Red (who penned the 2007 remake). It is simple and effective. Mark Isham's score is subdued and creepy, perfectly suited to the amazingly eerie Death Valley settings brilliantly shot by John Seale. Interestingly, Harmon made a film very similar to this (though nowhere near as effective) starring Jim Caviezel, Highwaymen, in 2002.

Jim is driving a Cadillac cross country USA. It's not his car, it's a 'driveaway', but that doesn't really matter. What matters is Jim doesn't have a great deal of common sense. It's rainy. It's dark. It's the middle of fucking nowhere, and he stops to pick up a hitchhiker.

Rutger Hauer enters the car with the cold air of barely contained menace. When, after some strange and eerie small talk, he casually tells Jim that he severed the extremities of a VW driver a couple miles back and he's going to do the same thing to Jim, you believe he is capable of doing just that.

After Jim manages to push him out of the vehicle, we see him slowly get to his feet against the slowly-rising sun. This is Ryder's game; getting picked up on desolate highways, killing whoever gave him a ride, then getting out and doing it all over again to the next unwitting driver.

But Jim ruins it. He pushes Ryder out before he can finish the job. So, Ryder comes up with a new game. And Jim is the unwilling player.

Ryder watches the car disappear along the highway. He's marked Jim. Jim is a dead man. Or at least that's what we're supposed to think. But Ryder doesn't want to kill. In fact, he gets a perfect opportunity to a few minutes later in the film. Yet he doesn't take it. Instead, he toys with him, and sets him up to take the fall for a few random killings. He's 'grooming' Jim, trying to force him to grow the balls to do what he must: stop Ryder.

The film stretches plausibility a number of times in the ensuing cat-and-mouse game Ryder and Jim play out against the backdrop of the lonely highways of outback USA. No-one is a match for Ryder - the highway patrol, the sheriff, the... um, other sheriff, his deputies, even a helicopter can't dent him. He brings it down with a couple well aimed rounds. He also manages to appear and disappear like a ghost, even through locked doorways and past fully conscious people. And this would all suck, if it wasn't for the great performances by the two leads.

Hauer is perfect as Ryder. His eyes have just the right amount of unhinged crazy. And I like the little touches - like Ryder wearing a wedding ring. It's such a subtle detail I didn't notice until watching the film again recently. I wondered if it was a trophy, or some detail of his past - some indication of a loss that drove him insane.

And C. Thomas Howell is great as the kid who got more than he bargained for. You really feel for him in a couple of scenes as Ryder thwarts all his attempts to contact the authorities and explain what's going on.

Jennifer Jason Leigh makes a brief appearance as Nash, the love interest who takes to Jim and tries to help him. I find it hilarious that she is very quick to abandon her normal life and become a felon. In one scene she's a small town diner waitress dreaming of 'one day' going to California. The next, she's hanging out of a car window shooting at cops.

Anyway, at it's core this is a two-man drama. It's this one-on-one aspect I really like about The Hitcher. Yes, we know how it's going to play out. But the fun is watching Ryder taunt, and Jim squirm. And then it's fun to see the tables turned. Though Ryder hardly squirms - he knows this is how it would go down.

The final scenes are haunting, mainly due to the sparse score and John Seale's fantastic photography. I like how Ryder seems to almost welcome death in the film's last moments. It's just the two of them, on a lonely stretch of highway. Jim has a shotgun levelled at him, but Ryder makes no move to get out of the way. We get the feeling this is just the way it had to be. By his own admission, Ryder is "tired." He wants this to be over. And in Jim, Ryder has found the perfect adversary. The only one who could ride this out with him to the grisly end. Ryder's orchestrated chaos has played out right down to this very moment. Game over.

Note: this is an updated version of a review I posted for The Hitcher on Best-Horror-Movies.com. The original can be seen here:
http://www.best-horror-movies.com/review?name=the-hitcher-1986-review

Rocky IV (1985)

Americans = Good. Commies = Bad. Got it. Now I just need the rest of my life to be this black and white.

Rocky IV is a 1985 movie directed by and starring Sylvester Stallone, and starring Dolph Lundgren, Carl Weathers and Brigitte Nielsen.
        
I normally don’t bother with plot descriptions in my write ups, but because the plot of Rocky IV can be summed up in ten syllables I figured what the hell.

Apollo dies. Rocky avenges him.

This was my favourite of the Rocky movies when I was a kid. Watching it now, I can safely say it still is, but for very different reasons. When I was a kid the aforementioned revenge plot (which back then seemed a lot more complex to my sugar-addled young mind) and the David vs Goliath showdown between Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) and Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) was thrilling. Now, it’s laughably over the top and all the more enjoyable because of it. As a kid, the subtle-as-a-sledgehammer Cold War allegory was completely lost on me. Now, it’s loads of fun to watch these actors try to make this moronic stuff seem sincere. As a kid, the incredibly cheesy moments between Stallone and his son gave me goose bumps. Now, they make me laugh so hard I nearly pass out.

What staggers me now is how oblivious I was as a kid to the homoeroticism in Rocky movies. It’s fantastic. After Drago pummels Apollo Creed to death we get a brilliant scene where Rocky drives his car (in the rain of course) and reminisces about his friendship with Creed. We are treated to a montage of scenes from the previous films of them sparring in the ring, frolicking in the surf wearing short shorts and dancing together in front of a mirror while so oiled up it’s a wonder they don’t slide across the floor.

And I love that the American/Commie references take a nose dive into absurdity more than once. My favourite is the requisite ‘training montage’ that Rocky movies are famous for. In this one, we see the Iron-Curtain himself, Dolph Lundgren training in a state of the art gym, aided by machines and steroids. Everything about his training is artificial and robotic, and thus FALSE YOU PINKO COMMIE BASTARDS. Whereas Rocky trains in the snowy wilderness, lifting massive tree trunks and slogging through the snow like a sled dog, because he is a REAL ALL AMERICAN MAN.

But what the hell is with comedic relief robots in 80’s films? I think people just got so excited about technology advancing they just wanted to stick robots in everything.

There's one strange moment at Paulie’s house when the robot interrupts Apollo telling Rocky that he's coming out of retirement. It sort of appears from nowhere, plays some music, chatters incessantly and then, hilariously, it disappears and the scene continues as if nothing has happened. This film doesn’t just throw reality out the window. It dropkicks it out and screams ‘Fuck off!’ after it.

And while we’re talking about reality or lack thereof, the climactic boxing matches in the Rocky movies are always hilariously ridiculous, but the one in this film outdoes all that came before it and nothing has topped it since. Not only does Drago basically use Rocky’s head like a speedbag, but a couple of times they actually seem to start doing wrestling moves. I love the over-emphasised punching sound effects too. It sounds like a guy smacking a wet bag of potatoes with a shovel.

And then of course to top it all off we get Rocky’s inspirational speech at the end. It really is tremendous. This writing launches so far into terrible that it comes full circle and becomes absolutely fucking brilliant. And just when you think it can’t possibly get any more ludicrous there’s a scene where the crowd slowly starts applauding and getting to their feet. Even the stalwart Russian leader guy who is basically Gorbachev without the birth mark seems to shed a tear. Jesus wept, either shoot me now or give me a US visa so I can emigrate. 100 minutes extremely well spent indeed.

American Sniper (2014)

Bradley Cooper buffs up and single-handedly defeats the terrorists all while raising a family and…wait a gosh-darned minute here… I don’t think that baby’s real!!

American Sniper is a 2014 war film directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller.

Clint Eastwood’s films are very much like the old school, all-American cars that feature in a lot of them. They are reliable. They are big, bold, and dependable. There are no surprises. What you see is what you get. He is the Gran Torino of Hollywood directors. And I’d hazard a guess he’s not a Democrat.

An almost deific reverence for the US military permeates a lot of the films he has directed in the last decade. From the noble Marines in Flags of Our Fathers, to grizzled Korean War veteran Walt in Gran Torino, and now to a decorated Navy SEAL in American Sniper, it’s obvious Eastwood holds the American armed services in high regard. This is by no means a bad thing, it’s just that it makes for some very black and white films. There’s not a lot of grey in Eastwood’s American Sniper. It’s once again the heroic Americans against the evil terrorists. American Sniper is not a brilliant film. Like the cars I alluded to earlier, it’s dependable. It’s extremely well made. But there are no surprises. The battle scenes, while very well staged, filmed, and acted, are pretty much Whack-A-Terrorist. The villains, although apparently based on real people, are pretty stock standard Evil Terrorist Scum. The main bad guy even wears all black just so we're a hundred per cent clear this is a guy we're supposed to hate. And the Iraqi people in this film who are not the ‘bad guys’ even wear white in several scenes. Clint, dude, we get it. It’s nice to see that old age has made you no more subtle than when you were waving a 44 Magnum in people’s faces, but enough already.

The fact that Chris Kyle, the US Navy SEAL sniper this film is based on, suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, is no surprise. The first human being he kills, seeing it close up through a high powered scope, is a small child. This is one of the film’s best scenes. The kid is running towards a Marine convoy carrying a grenade, so Kyle (Bradley Cooper) has no choice but to shoot him. This is the first scene it became apparent to me that Bradley Cooper has well and truly transcended being The Hangover guy, and can actually act. Eastwood lingers both on Cooper’s eyes, and his vision of the dead child through the scope. You can see all of Kyle’s training, patriotism, love of and need to protect his beloved America has come down to this single moment – the mind-numbing realisation that his job involves having to kill kids. 

This leads into another great scene later on, where a small boy retrieves a grenade launcher from a guy Kyle has just killed. I loved the agony on Cooper’s face as he realises he may have to do it again. He’s quietly begging the kid not to pick it up. And then when the kid finally drops it and runs off, he is so relieved he almost throws up. Again, it’s all in Cooper’s eyes. His mind was already stretched like a rubber band. If he’d had to pull the trigger on a little kid again, it would have snapped. It’s a really impressive performance.

A scene early on sets the tone for the entire film. It’s a flashback to Kyle’s childhood, where his little brother gets bullied and beaten up at school. Around the dinner table later, his father tells the boys that there are three kinds of people in the world. Sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. It becomes obvious at that moment that Kyle took it upon himself to be the sheepdog. Becoming a sniper, able to protect other soldiers, was a natural fit for him. He even remarks later, when being counselled for PTSD, that it’s not the thought of people he killed that keeps him up at night. It’s the thought of the people he failed to protect.

The film reminded me a little bit of The Hurt Locker in the scenes where Kyle returns home and his wife (Sienna Miller) struggles to get him to communicate or stay home. He’s glad to be home, but at the same time it preys on his mind that while he is at home, he can’t be the sheepdog to his men anymore. I like the irony that he doesn’t realise he needs to be a sheepdog for his family as well.

Speaking of irony, I found the calls home really off-putting. Kyle has a satellite phone, and he repeatedly calls his wife back in the US. The problem is, he chooses really inappropriate times to do it. Like just as he’s about to snipe someone, and another time right as his convoy is heading into enemy territory. I kept thinking; why not just wait til you’re back at base? This leads to the strange irony of a scene where he says his wife needs to be ‘protected’ from hearing about his ‘work’, but then during these phone calls forces her to listen to him coming under fire. And he not once but twice leaves her uncertain as to whether or not he’s still alive by either dropping the phone or the signal crapping out. I’m surprised he was met with a hug when he returned home. I’d have expected a slap upside the head.

American Sniper is not a bad film. I think films like Lone Survivor and The Hurt Locker dealt with similar subject matter in much more effective ways, but it’s still a nicely executed war film with a strong central performance. And its proof that Eastwood still wields enormous talent from what must now be a pretty ergonomic director’s chair, even if he still has all the subtlety of a hydrogen bomb. Two and a bit hours well spent.