The 2014 film American Sniper, directed by Clint Eastwood, has been criticized by ex-soldiers, film directors, actors and critics, academics, investigative journalists, authors, media figures, political figures, and watchdog groups for its alleged inaccuracies and misleading portrayal of US Navy Seal Chris Kyle.

The controversies involve political, historical, social, cultural, philosophical, moral, religious, racial/ethnic and other aspects of society.

Criticism of political, historical, social, cultural, philosophical, moral, religious, and racial aspects of the film

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee said that the release of the movie coincided with increased threats against Arabs and Muslims.^[1] It has also accused Eastwood of dishonestly linking the September 11 attacks with Iraq.^[2]

Michael Moore tweeted, in response to American Sniper, "My uncle [was] killed by sniper in WW2. We were taught snipers were cowards. Will shoot you in the back. Snipers aren't heroes. And invaders are worse." [sic]^[3]

Noam Chomsky criticized "what the worship of a movie about a cold-blooded killer says about the American people."^[4]

Lindy West of The Guardian wrote: "In his memoir, Kyle reportedly described killing as “fun”, something he “loved”; he was unwavering in his belief that everyone he shot was a “bad guy”. “I hate the damn savages,” he wrote. “I couldn’t give a flying fuck about the Iraqis.”" and: "If he (Eastwood), intentionally or not, makes a hero out of Kyle – who, bare minimum, was a racist who took pleasure in dehumanising and killing brown people – is he responsible for validating racism, murder, and dehumanisation? Is he a propagandist if people use his work as propaganda?"^[5]

Zack Beauchamp of Vox felt that the film's greatest sin was condescending "to Americans and American troops by acting as if we could not possibly handle moral ambiguity about America's mission in Iraq. But it did, and that is a disservice not just to film's viewers, but to the millions of Americans who were affected by the war and deserve to have that story told honestly."^[6]

John Wight, writing for Russia Today, strongly criticized the film and its reception to date. He said, "The moral depravity into which the US is sinking is shown by American Sniper glorifying the exploits of a racist killer receiving six Oscar nominations, whereas 'Selma' depicting Martin Luther King's struggle against racism has been largely ignored."^[7]

Matt Taibbi wrote that "Sniper is a movie whose politics are so ludicrous and idiotic that under normal circumstances it would be beneath criticism" and that "Eastwood plays for cheap applause and goes super-dumb even by Hollywood standards."^[8]

Chris Hedges, in an article titled "Killing Ragheads for Jesus", wrote that "American Sniper lionizes the most despicable aspects of U.S. society—the gun culture, the blind adoration of the military, the belief that we have an innate right as a 'Christian' nation to exterminate the 'lesser breeds' of the earth, a grotesque hypermasculinity that banishes compassion and pity, a denial of inconvenient facts and historical truth, and a belittling of critical thinking and artistic expression. Many Americans, especially white Americans trapped in a stagnant economy and a dysfunctional political system, yearn for the supposed moral renewal and rigid, militarized control the movie venerates."^[9]

Zaid Jilani of Salon attacked American Sniper's inaccuracies, arguing both the film and Kyle's reputation "are all built on a set of half-truths, myths and outright lies."^[10]

Max Blumenthal said the film American Sniper is "filled with lies and distortion from start to finish," makes a hero out of "a pathological liar and a mass killer" and promotes falsehoods about Navy SEAL Chris Kyle along with the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Blumenthal said the film is a "bogus whitewash of the atrocities committed by American troops in Iraq."^[11]

Seth Rogen was accused of criticizing the film when he tweeted that the film reminded him of the Nazi sniper propaganda film showing in the third act of Quentin Tarantino's 2009 film Inglourious Basterds. He later stated that he was not criticizing the film but making a comparison.^[12][13]

Sophia A. McClennen, a Professor of International Affairs and Comparative Literature at the Pennsylvania State University, said there are "insanities and fantasies at the heart of" American Sniper and that "despite the fact that the film depicts Kyle as a hero and a martyr, the real American sniper was heartless and cruel. Rather than struggle with moral dilemmas as we see in the film, the actual man had no such hesitation and no such conscience. But to focus on American Sniper's depiction of Kyle is to miss the larger problems of the film. In addition to sugarcoating Kyle, the film suffers from major myopia — from a complete inability to see the larger picture. And that is why criticism of the film has to look at its director, Clint Eastwood, and the troubling ways he represents a dark, disturbing feature of the GOP mind-set."^[14]

Ross Caputi, a former marine who participated in the US's second siege of Fallujah, criticized American Sniper, writing that "What American Sniper offers us — more than a heart-wrenching tale about Chris Kyle's struggle to be a soldier, a husband, and a father; more than an action packed story about America's most lethal sniper — is an exposure of the often hidden side of American war culture. The criminality that has characterized American military engagements since the American Indian Wars, and most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, is hardly noticeable in this film."^[15]

Comedian Bill Maher stated "He's a psychopath patriot, and we love him," and "'I hate the damn savages' doesn't seem like a very Christian thing to say," comparing Kyle disfavourably to anti-war general Dwight D. Eisenhower.^[16]

Journalist Eamon Murphy wrote on Mondoweiss that "it's hard to know, when watching Eastwood's Iraq War, where doltish film conventions end and rotten politics begins. (Bushism was an awful lot like an idiotic blockbuster in the first place.) The bits of military exposition are outrageously at odds with the facts, but they also sound so hokey it seems almost stupid to object by citing reality."^[17]

Peter Maass wrote the film "ignores history" and that the film makes no attempt to provide "anything beyond Kyle’s limited comprehension of what was happening." He added that the movie is "utterly false to the experience of millions of Iraqis and to the historical record. Further, it’s no act of patriotism to celebrate, without context or discussion, a grunt’s view that the people killed in Iraq were animals deserving their six-feet-under fate." Maass also wrote public statements made by Bradley Cooper, the film’s star and co-producer, appear to show Cooper may "fail to understand how war movies operate in popular culture. When a film venerates an American sniper but portrays as sub-human the Iraqis whose country we were occupying—the film has one Iraqi who seems sympathetic but turns out to be hiding a cache of insurgent weapons—it conveys a political message that is flat wrong. Among other things, it ignores and dishonors the scores of thousands of Iraqis who fought alongside American forces and the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians who were killed or injured in the crossfire." Maass added, "While it is about a certain type of bravery, the film itself is not brave."^[18]

Criticism of media coverage of the film

Noam Chomsky criticized American Sniper and the media that glorified it. He drew a parallel between Sniper and the US "global assassination campaign, the drone campaign, which officially is aimed at murdering people who are suspected of maybe someday planning to harm us."^[19]

Popular/cultural evaluation

Sheldon Richman commented on the popular/cultural evaluation of Kyle: "Despite what some people think, hero is not a synonym for competent government-hired killer." Richman said if American Sniper launches a frank public conversation about war and heroism, Eastwood will have performed a "badly needed" service. Richman added: "Jeanine Pirro, a Fox News commentator, said, “Chris Kyle was clear as to who the enemy was. They were the ones his government sent him to kill.” Appalling! Kyle was a hero because he eagerly and expertly killed whomever the government told him to kill? Conservatives, supposed advocates of limited government, sure have an odd notion of heroism. Excuse me, but I have trouble seeing an essential difference between what Kyle did in Iraq and what Adam Lanza did at Sandy Hook Elementary School. It certainly was not heroism."^[20]

Film historian Max Alvarez, in an article titled From Psychopaths to American Hero? A Short History of Sniper Cinema, expressed the view that "It can only be hoped that American Sniper will not set the tone for future Hollywood movies in which “sharpshooters” are portrayed heroically."^[21]

Eastwood's response

Responding to critics that called the film Pro-War on Terror, Pro-Republican and jingoistic, Eastwood said that it is a "stupid analysis" and that the film has nothing to do with political parties. He stated: "I was a child growing up during World War II. That was supposed to be the one to end all wars. And four years later, I was standing at the draft board being drafted during the Korean conflict, and then after that there was Vietnam, and it goes on and on forever ... I just wonder ... does this ever stop? And no, it doesn’t. So each time we get in these conflicts, it deserves a lot of thought before we go wading in or wading out. Going in or coming out. It needs a better thought process, I think."^[22] Eastwood called American Sniper "the biggest anti-war statement any film can make," and said that "the fact of what [war] does to the family and the people who have to go back into civilian life like Chris Kyle did" and “what it (war) does to the people left behind." Eastwood further stated: "One of my favorite war movies that I’ve been involved with is Letters from Iwo Jima and that was about family, about being taken away from life, being sent someplace. In World War II, everybody just sort of went home and got over it. Now there is some effort to help people through it."^[23]

References