New American Sniper Movie Received Mostly Positive Reviews From Major Critics
Warner Bros. Pictures released their new drama film, “American Sniper,” into theaters yesterday, December 25th, and all the reviews have been submitted from the major, top movie critics. It turns out that it set a pretty good impression on most of them, getting an overall 72 score out of a possible 100 across 26 reviews at the Metacritic.com site. The movie stars: Sienna Miller and Bradley Cooper. We’ve added blurbs from a few of the critics,below.
Kyle Smith over at the New York Post, gave it an excellent 100 score, stating: “The moral alertness of the film is of the level normally confined, in military pictures, to talky courtroom scenes, yet Eastwood skillfully works dilemmas into propulsive and suspenseful action.”
Joe Morgenstern at the Wall Street Journal, gave it a nice 90 score. He stated: “Finding words for the starring performance is easy. After breaking through as a brilliant comic actor in “The Hangover,” “Silver Linings Playbook” and “American Hustle,” Mr. Cooper turns out to be just as brilliant at intensely dramatic inwardness. In his extraordinarily austere portrayal, Kyle’s silences are eloquent, his impassivity interesting, his inner conflicts implied without a trace of sentimentality.”
Kenneth Turan from the Los Angeles Times, gave it a 90 score, saying: “American Sniper is at its best when it deals with the assembly-line-of-death relentlessness of combat for Kyle, how it simultaneously consumes him and wears him down, and how, to his wife’s distress, it turns the civilian life he returns to between tours of duty into the aberration, not the norm.”
Peter Travers at Rolling Stone, gave it an 88 grade, stating: “Eastwood, working from a script that Jason Hall adapted from Kyle’s 2012 memoir, fuses the explosive and the sorrowful as only he can. That’s why his film takes a piece out of you.”
Elizabeth Weitzman over at the New York Daily News, gave it an 80 score. She stated: “The best movies are ever-shifting, intelligent and open-hearted enough to expand alongside an audience. American Sniper, Clint Eastwood’s harrowing meditation on war, is built on this foundation of uncommon compassion.”
Todd McCarthy from The Hollywood Reporter, gave it an 80 score, stating: ” A taut, vivid and sad account of the brief life of the most accomplished marksman in American military annals, American Sniper feels very much like a companion piece—in subject, theme and quality—to The Hurt Locker.”
Justin Chang at Variety, gave it an 80 score, stating: “Just as “The Hurt Locker” found revelatory depths in Jeremy Renner, so American Sniper hinges on Cooper’s restrained yet deeply expressive lead performance, allowing many of the drama’s unspoken implications to be read plainly in the actor’s increasingly war-ravaged face.”
Claudia Puig at USA Today, gave it a 75 grade. She stated: “American Sniper’s wartime sequences are well-paced and harrowing, reminiscent of those in 2008’s “The Hurt Locker.” Like that film, Sniper can be interpreted either as a patriotic salute or as an incisive anti-war movie. In either case, it’s a powerful, moving and tragic tale.”
A.O. Scott at The New York Times, gave it a 60 score, stating: “Less a war movie than a western — the story of a lone gunslinger facing down his nemesis in a dusty, lawless place — it is blunt and effective, though also troubling.”
Chris Nashawaty over at Entertainment Weekly, gave it a 58 grade. He stated: “Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper is a film that evokes complicated emotions. A month after seeing it, you might still be wrestling with whether it’s powerful, profound, or propaganda.”
Lastly, Inkoo Kang at TheWrap, gave it a 40 score, stating: “Director Clint Eastwood‘s focus on Kyle is so tight that no other character, including wife Taya (Sienna Miller), comes through as a person, and the scope so narrow that the film engages only superficially with the many moral issues surrounding the Iraq War.” Stay tuned. Also, get your favorite Movie stuff, and more by Clicking Here.
