SELMA

Everyone recognizes the image of Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, delivering the legacy defining “I Have A Dream” speech or the photos of him standing at the front of a church delivering a sermon. History has given us an almost god-like figure in the way that he is spoken of in schools and countless other memorials in his dedication.

The greatest accomplishment of Ava Duvernay’s powerful film Selma is not its triumphant acting, cinematography or heart felt score – but the “deconstruction” of the saint-like image of Dr. King. What makes him like you or I? The answer has been right in front of us all along. He was a man. And just like any other man, he felt fear, anxiety, and great passion for assembling what eventually became the Selma Marches.

David Oyelowo delivers the performance of his career as Martin Luther King, already having received the Nobel Peace Prize, yet coming back to a racially divided Southern America shows his work is far from over. Duvernay often times places Oyelowo right in the center of the frame, drawing the eye straight to him, whether it be from directly above looking down at his head or from the point of view of people sitting in church pews.

The film’s strong suit is it’s cast. Selma has the best ensemble performance from any movie made in the last year. Tom Wilkinson paints President Lyndon Johnson not as a hero or as a villain, but as a man caught in the middle of a great struggle who is trying to be a good diplomat for what he believes to be the US Government’s best interests. Tim Roth’s take on Alabama Governor George Wallace is slimy and every bit unlikable as he came across in reality.

The daily struggle that comes with Dr. King’s work takes its toll on his marriage with Coretta (played by Carmen Ejogo), showing us a side of the man, not often discussed publicly. Paul Webb’s script does an incredible job of publicly showing us a man, who was as strong as a rock, but would turn right around and take frantic action as people coming from all over the country to participate in the Selma protests were targeted by attackers of the opposing side.


Without a doubt, this year’s Academy Award nominations were full of surprises, but Selma’s overall lack of presence among the nominees is downright shocking. Its serious subject matter begins to feel like “too much” for a film with little to no comedy by its third act. It is possible for a script to be too rich in its subject matter and as the film draws to a close, it shows. Perhaps the most important film made this side of the year 2010, Selma looks past the glorified images of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and examines what makes him like you and I: his humanity and the triumph, pain and passion that came with it.
10/10

AMERICAN SNIPER

The following review attempts to leave out any bias for Chris Kyle, the US Military, the Left, the Right, and focus purely on the cinematic aspects of this film. You can read my personal thoughts on the controversy surrounding the film here. 

The controversy surrounding American Sniper made me extremely curious to check out Clint Eastwood’s latest film. The 84-year-old director scored the biggest box office opening of his directorial career telling the story of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, the deadliest sniper in American Military history with 160 confirmed kills. He was tragically killed at a gun range helping a fellow veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The film is based on his book of the same name.

Alfred Hitchcock once said that if you wanted to create suspense, an imperfect way to do so would be to have men sitting around a table and then suddenly, the blast of a bomb having been hidden beneath the table goes off. Instead, one must first see the bomb, then have the men enter the room, proceed to talk for a while, then have the explosion.

Eastwood employs the latter method in the opening of his film, showing us the moral dilemma of Chris Kyle’s first potential kill he is viewing from a perch above the action below: a child being handed a grenade to use against oncoming American troops. The film never goes any further than what is mentioned above to create true tension between Kyle and a man known as Mustafa (played by Sammy Sheik), the Iraqi equivalent of the titular American Sniper.  He is a silent killing machine that exists in the context of the film only to play spin the bullet (I’m not kidding) and conveniently kill characters necessary for the plot to move forward. 

Mustafa is a prime example of the two dimensionality of the film’s Middle Eastern protagonists. At this point in the film, I questioned whether this was done on purpose. I will never know what it's like to experience combat from the perspective of a Navy SEAL, but for those guys, it was probably a kill or be killed mentality that returned many to their families. It's rumored that when Steven Spielberg was attached to direct the project, he wanted to explore the psychological aspects of both the Chris Kyle and Mustafa, but this was unable to come to fruition due to time and budget constraints.

Sienna Miller delivers a great performance as Taya, Kyle’s wife, with the amount of material she is given to deal with. The only memorable moments in her performance are questioning why the father of her children chooses to go off to Iraq and fight an enemy thousands of miles away instead of building a relationship with his newborn children. All attention is focused on Kyle himself; after all it is his film. I found myself getting my hopes up for a psychological exploration behind the moral questions raised by killing people for his country. 

Instead, a great performance from Bradley Cooper attempted to compensate for very bland characters. There is no question about Cooper owning this film from start to finish. For those who know what the true life Chris Kyle looked and sounded like (the man appeared on a few talk shows to promote his book when it was released in 2012), it’s a no brainer why the Academy gave him his 3^rd consecutive Oscar nomination for this performance. His voice is pitched differently, the characterized Texan accent is pretty darn good, and his usual trim physique is hidden beneath 225 pounds of bulk Cooper put on for the role.

One of the most striking scenes comes as a sandstorm looms on the horizon and Chris Kyle finally reaches the breaking point of servitude. Eastwood manages to cleverly sneak in a nod to the flashback within the opening of the film as he leaves behind one life for another. An impending storm means impending doom, not only because Kyle and his team are surrounded by hostile enemies, but because it is in this inescapable fate that he realizes that he didn't have to put himself through this. It is the closest we get to a look into the man's psyche, something I was dying to see instead of an Iraqi fighting against, then helping, then turning back against US soldiers. 

Instead of showing us a potentially heart breaking battle to return to normalcy once back in the US, writer Jason Hall writes off Kyle’s PTSD as a passing thought late in the third act. Again, I'm not kidding. Eastwood’s film strives for greatness, but never truly achieves or clearly gets across its Pro-Veteran, anti-war statement due to its flimsy script.

 6/10

My Thoughts on AMERICAN SNIPER

This is not a review of Clint Eastwood's latest film, American Sniper, but instead my thoughts on the controversy ensuing as a result of people viewing the film. 

Early on in American Sniper, Chris Kyle (played by Bradley Cooper in an amazing performance) walks in on one of his fellow soldiers, Biggles (Jake McDorman), reading a Punisher comic book and talks about Kyle's first two kills as a sniper: a young boy and his mother attempting to throw a grenade at an oncoming convoy of soldiers. The two men discuss the evils amongst them are unlike anything they've seen. Evil. That word that comes up a few times in this film. Many have taken to twitter calling Muslims evil or expressing hatred towards them as a result of American Sniper.

I do not believe Mr. Eastwood's film makes out the people of the Muslim faith to be evil and anyone having that impression certainly misinterpreted what they saw on screen. The true tragedy of the war and of Kyle's four tours of duty was the onset of post-traumatic stress disorder. One scene finds him sitting at home reading a magazine and is alarmed at the sound of a lawn mower somewhere on his street starting up. At an auto shop, an auto technician's equipment causes him to flinch. Combat in the Middle East caused Kyle to be lost for a number of years, not truly returning to a stable state of mind until after he began to work with other Veterans suffering from PTSD.

Eastwood did not give us a film about heroism, patriotism, or defending our country. American Sniper is about a war that makes no sense and the media motivating blind anger that drives a man to continue serving in the military until in the face of impending death, decides he's had enough. Ironically, Chris Kyle was killed not on the battlefield or by enemy fire, but by a fellow Veteran at a shooting range. Why he would take someone with severe post-traumatic stress to a shooting range is beyond me, but the man lost his life trying to help others in his situation.

The opening of the film shows us a good ol' boy interested in serving in the military, picking the Navy Seals after seeing coverage of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings. Again, the media pushes him to take his hatred out through serving in the military. Later in the movie, images of 9/11 precede his return to action. The war in Iraq has absolutely nothing to do with the terrorist attacks on New York City in 2001, so this leads me to believe that Kyle's misplaced anger was purposefully done to show how misleading what we see on television can be. At least I hope so. Clint Eastwood is not a stupid man and has been challenging himself and his audiences the last few years with some great directorial material.

Another element that I initially took issues with was that the film is very black and white in terms of the portrayal of the enemy. Again, another creative decision? I can't imagine what experiencing combat is like, but in the film, the enemies and very black and white. There is good, there is bad. Not too much in between. To those who have been those situations, I have been told that it is kill or be killed. I really really want to believe that Clint Eastwood took this into consideration when portraying the enemy combatants as one sided. My greatest critical issue with the film comes at this point. A friend of mine has said that when Steven Spielberg was initially attached to direct, he was met with resistance from the producers when he wanted to alter the story to include segments showing Mustafa's humanity and home life.

Is American Sniper propaganda? I personally think the film's right wing elements are packed on thick (Eastwood is a republican), causing the right to think the film is pro-war. But how can it be pro-war when Chris Kyle repeatedly picks serving in the military over his wife? Terrorism destroyed lives on both the USA and Iraqi fronts, but to say that this film disregards one over the other is preposterous. If American Sniper tells us anything it is that PTSD took Chris Kyle from his family for years, mentally, for years, blinded his thinking, and then ultimately, another Vet suffering far more severely than he did killed him.

I am not criticizing Chris Kyle, his beliefs, or his family, but the twisted notions having been taken on by the public about Clint Eastwood's film. If anything, it tells us that a man in an already very specific good ol' boy Christianized upbringing let's what he sees on TV influence him. If you would like to discuss my thoughts on Kyle, his untimely death, his portrayal on film, get in touch with me on Twitter, Facebook, or any other means on social media (@eduardovictory).