American Sniper - the movie

American Sniper, the movie, is incredible.  I expected as much when I saw that Clint Eastwood was the director. His Gran Turino movie is one of my all time favourites.  Bradley Cooper stars as  Chris Kyle in this movie which is based on Chris Kyle's life.  Chris Kyle was the American Navy Seal credited as the deadliest sniper, with 255 kills of which 160 were officially confirmed,  in the Iraq War.  Chris Kyle did 4 tours and returned home to be killed by another Veteran who he was helping.  His wife Taya Renae Kyle is played by the extraordinary Sienna Miller.
The amazing story and direction breaks the movie up into matching frames with Chris Kyle in Iraq and Taya his wife at home.  In one poignant scene he comes under attack while talking on a satellite phone to Tayal.  Sienna Miller's acting in this part of the movie is deeply beautiful.  Chris Kyle did 4 tours. By the fourth he's experiencing symptons associated with PTSD.  It's his last tour.  His bravery and the extraordinary dangers and threats he and his team faced in Iraq are so alien to the world at home.  The movie shows this well.  There's an amazing juxtaposition of Chris Kyle fighting against the Olympic athlete sniper who serves the Iraqui's.  Two pees in a pod who each sees themselves as protecting their fellow soldiers.  Each amazingly disciplined and skilled.  The fanaticism of the enemy is captured well.  Chris Kyle's simple service and explanation for his work is that he's there to protect his comrades.  He's a hero.  A man's man. A soldier's soldier. He's a big brother and his little brother joins the marines.  Chris Kyle is the big brother one wants.  He's a devoted husband but his work makes family life difficult.  The movie captures this so well.  All in all it's a great movie of a great man.
Chris Kyle is to the work of a sniper what Einstein was to the work of physicists.  He's like a Muhammed Ali with a rifle.  An amazing superhuman disciplined force of nature.  A genius like Billy Bishop who shot down the Red Baron. He's an American Hero.
The movie is great.  Clint Eastwood is amazing. The writer Jason Hall is amazing too.
That said I was appalled to read some of the critics of the movie, arm chair critics mind you, some who'd not even seen it, some who criticized Chris Kyle, and they themselves had achieved nothing significant in their lives except maybe got drunk and smoked some pot. It was a sad reflection on Facebook and Social Media to see the negativity and 'haters' and those whose envy of greatness had them spouting all manner of nonsense.
Yes, war is horrible.  Yes America is an empire like the British before them and the Roman's before them and the Russians and the Turks and the Azteks and the Moghuls and all the world's empires. And yes there are soldiers.  And yes soldier fight and compete with other soldiers who would have what the people inside empire's have.  So the Nazi's fought all of Europe to establish the Nazi empire and the Communists of Mao tse Tung fought all the Chinese to get their empire. Now all the military's of the world stand ready to fight each other.
Of course like John Lennon, I  say  "Give Peace a Chance."
Every adolescent boy and protected girl knows what everyone should do. Of course we should stop fighting and ISIS should stop chopping peoples heads off.
Everyone has great ideas and they pass a bottle of wine and a bong and talk big talk.  Tibet and Nepal are wonderful places where the very spiritual meditate but then the Chinese Communists, one of lowest forms of humanoid uncivilized bullies arrogant psychopathic sorts not even toilet trained no better than the raping Russian peasant soldiers who destroyed warsaw, while these Chinese thugs killed the monks.  The Buddhists fight Buddhists, Moslems fight Moslems and Christians Christians and Jews Jews and sometimes they fight each other.
War is a basic.
Soldiers have served to protect the rest of us who don't want to face bullets and bombs up close and real.  Van Gogh was a great painter. Chis Kyle was a great sniper.  The world is full of talkers.  I'm personally still impressed with great orators but not the stuff that was written like spewed garbage by the critics of Chris Kyle.  He's an American Hero and lots  of people today make a 'troll' life for themselves 'chopping off the heads of others in an attempt to make themselves taller.'
I accept the need for law and order and military actions if only because as I've got older I've seen that 'polyannaism' leads to the Chamberlain like silliness that starts wars.  Animals attack when they think they have an advantage.  That's the way of predators.
I'm as much an idealist as the next guy but I'm not smoking marijuana and not on crack so I can ask the simple question who would have saved the lives that Chris Kyle saved better than the best like he was.  Who would you as a soldier want having oversight on your walking through the valley of the shadow of death where women and children are used as combatants.  Personally I'd always want Chris Kyle on my side in a war.  He embodied excellence.
So thank you Chris Kyle for your bravery, discipline, service and sacrifice. Thank you the wife and children of Chris Kyle for your sacrifice.
Thank you Jason Hall and Clint Eastwood this incredible story.  And thank you Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller for such great acting that I feel I got a glympse into the reality of the sacrifices that soldiers and their families make so that we can be safe.  

 

A Step into the Darkness - film

A Step into the Darkness was just one of the many films I picked up in the discount bin at Rogers so I could have something to watch while I ate dinner on my sailboat I'm not connected to cable or satellite for television shows and movies.
It's a film by Atil Inac.  If I'd seen the trailer I might have thought it was something I'd like to watch on the History or  Discovery channel. The filming of the countryside of Iraq and Turkey is worthy of National Geographic.
The cover shows an outstanding single woman carrying a bundle, looking perplexed in the dessert. I might have thought it a feminist pity pot movie with that overplayed communist twist of the plight of the underdog.  I might  even have thought it was a Disney creation where the little train that can does.  There's that kind of promotion in the thing.
But the movie wasn't any of these.  It was something far more.  It opened my eyes to the war by those who have no 'sides', the real casualties of conflict.  This really is about 'collateral damage' and the human spirit.
It moved me in a way few movies can.  It was that different and that deeply sensitive with enough action and intrigue to keep the plot ahead of the tears.
Subtitles and English.  It was billed as "A unique film shot on location inside Iraq in the midst of an ongoing war".
Suzan Genc, the star, won the best actress award at the Ankara International Film Festival.  The movie itself won several international Best Pictures.  But what do critics know.  I found it in the discount bin and watched it with rapt attention through all the drama, character unfolding and excitement to the extraordinary unpredictableending.
I'm telling you it's good.  It's really good.

Fair Game Movie

Fair Game, the movie, is directed by Doug Liman, starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn.  It's a chilling political drama. I found myself checking the Wikipedia on Ipad as the movie progressed.  Sure enough,  Joe Wilson was the ambassador to Niger. His wife was Valerie Plame.  They had 2 small children. The movie is based on Valerie Plames memoir, "Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House."
Her husband Joe Wilson had been sent to investigate a story that Iraq had yellowcake.  He returned to say they didn't.  Apparently there was also a dubious Weapons of Mass Destruction suggestion that some aluminum pipes were for a weapons factory. When America invaded Iraq and based it's invasion on this information, Joe Wilson said it was a lie and wrote a 2003 article for the New York Times saying "what i did not find".  It was a critique of the Bush Administrations manipulation of intelligence information to justify their invasion of Iraq.
To silence and discredit Joe Wilson, an ambassador who had been heralded as an American hero before this all began, Secretary of State Armitage 'leaked' his wife's name and position as a CIA spy. The movie states this resulted in countless deaths of her operatives in foregin countries.  It also resulted in daily threats against her life and her childrens life. The CIA refused to offer her protection.  Eventually lawyer "Scooter" Libby was found guilty of felony and disbarred. He was the adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.  In 2005 he was indicted by a federal grand jury for leaking the covert identity of Valerie Plame Wilson.
The movie speaks to the misinformation and deceit in high places in government.  Joe Wilson argues that the Republic can survive if citizens continue to tell the truth.  It is hard to consider such a sacrifice personally and professionally has to be made.  In Canada a whisteblower is persecuted, villified,  marginalized, and institutionalized.    The democracy of America shines forth in the example of Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame. There justice is done.  The cost is excruciating.  .
But if a former ambassador and US Congressman of Joe Wilson's stature with a wife who is a senior CIA operative face this much persecution, how little democracy is left in America, the once great republc.  There is no freedom in China. There is no freedom in Africa. There is no freedom in South America.  What freedom is left in Europe.  There is no freedom in the Middle East.  Is there freedom in France yet, that country where once "J'Accuse' rang out for democracy? Is there in Britain which like Canada, Australia, and the other former countries of the great British Empire are strangled by beaurocracy, political correctness and the greivance society.
As we appear to devolve politically to feudalism and the reign of warlords and gangsters, I can't help but think that Caesar and Caligula didn't even bother explaining their invasion of other nations.  They did it for individual profit.  Certainly the Hillary Clinton's  and Dick Cheney's gain immensely,  But are Clinton and Bush complicit or duped?.  Does Harper or Ignatieff know what's going on?  Are we all at the mercy of the lawyer advisoers like Scooter Libby?  Do special interest groups manipulate the media and other intelligence sources including the CIA to play us and our leaders like puppets?
I pray that democracy will flame from the coals that appeared in this movie.  On a good day I think of Athens,Britain's Magna Carta, the French Revolution,  the American Revolution and cheer for the young man in Teineman Square and those who fought Mubarek in Freedom's Square.  Mostly  I pray for Canada, that we might again be  the "true north" and 'free'.
Fair Game is a great thought provoking, inspiring and moving movie.