American Sniper made its debut this month across cinemas in the United States and broke all box office records as the highest grossed movie so far this year with over $100 million in revenue, as of the past weekend. The movie was produced by Clint Eastwood, directed by Micheal Moore and starred Bradley Cooper as the real life American sniper ‘Chris Kyle”. The movie is based on the real-life story of a Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle who holds the record as having the highest number of enemies killed by a single sniper in US military history has over 160 confirmed killings to his name. Twas based on the memoir written by Chris Kyle in his autobiography depicting his life as a sniper in the navy SEAL. The real Chris Kyle was killed in a shootout range in Texas on 2nd of Feb., 2013.
The movie instantly become a political issue in America partly because the producer Clint Eastwood is a well-known Republican and it was under the Administration of Republican President George W Bush that American invaded Iraq. The movie has also been highly criticized for glorifing the life of a bloodthirsty killer acting as pro-war propaganda.
Screenwriter Jerry Halls and producer Clint Eastwood have also been questioned on why they did not depict the death of Chris Kyle in the movie. Also, the real life adversarial experiences of the non-fictional character as written in his memoir such as battling with mental health, family breakdown and depressions and almost entirely glorifies gun-totting violence were not narrated in the supposedly non-fictional movie of a real-life character.
