American Sniper ’s creative team has repeatedly stressed in interviews that the film does not contain a political message. Edgar (2011).Ģ This article contributes to the debate through a critical analysis of how American Sniper transcodes a jingoist discourse of the Iraq War. A large amount of journalists and reviewers perceived the film as a respectful treatment of a difficult theme and a triumphant comeback for Eastwood as a director after a series of lukewarm received film such as Jersey Boys (2014) and J. These voices, however, were only one side of the debate concerning the film’s themes and political agenda. The controversy came to a boiling point when following the film’s release a twitter storm of Islamophobic death threats prompted the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) to ask for police protection against retaliation from moviegoers (Woold). Rolling Stone called the movie “a two-hour cinematic diversion about a killing machine with a heart of gold who slowly, very slowly, starts to feel bad after shooting enough women and children” (Taibi). Some newspapers and film magazines decried the movie as being little more than jingoist propaganda, glorifying a mass murderer. At the background of this financial and critical success lies the problem of American Sniper ’s political agenda, which has generated a heated debate. Apart from this box-office bravura the film also received six Academy Award nominations, including for best picture, and was met with generally good reviews (at the time of writing, both the Rottentomatoes and Metacritic score lies at 72%). Since its December 2014 release the film has earned close to half a billion dollars worldwide and is considered to be the highest grossing war film of all time. military history, American Sniper follows infamous Navy Seal Chris Kyle throughout his four tours of duty to Iraq.
Directed by Clint Eastwood and based on the autobiography of the most lethal sniper in U.S. 1 While recent years have seen no shortage of American action thrillers dealing with the War on Terror- Act of Valor (2012), Zero Dark Thirty (2012), and Lone Survivor (2013) to name just a few examples-no film has been met with such a great controversy as well as commercial success as American Sniper (2014).
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