7/10
It was entertaining enough if unspectacular for the first 75% of the film, but I felt like things kind of fell apart with the remaining 25%. Notwithstanding Kyle's actual account of the events, I thought the movie wrapped up his fourth tour way too neatly - casting Mustafa as a recurring villain gave the story a weird, almost "video game" type feel. Like Kyle had to beat the "final boss" before feeling like he had accomplished what he had to and could finally head home.
The ending was also problematic. Since the case still isn't closed on Kyle's death, there was only so much the movie could do or say in depicting it and it had a weirdly rushed, anticlimactic feel. Couldn't we have waited a couple more years to see how the trial shakes out before committing his life to film? In any case, it was not hard to be moved by the tragic poignancy of a guy who lived his life to protect others only to be murdered by one of his own...on U.S. soil no less.
I'm gobsmacked that people have criticized the movie for glorifying war or blamed it for dehumanizing Iraqis or anything like that...I don't know how dumb you have to be to interpret this as a "pro-war" movie, come on. I was actually expecting the movie to be a lot more chest-thumpingly pro-America (based on what I'd heard) than it turned out to be.
In any case, the action was mostly very good, and Bradley Cooper was very good himself, but in comparing this to other recent war movies, it's a lot closer to The Hurt Locker (i.e. meh, not bad) than Zero Dark Thirty (i.e. great) for me.
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