Chris Kyle: The "American Sniper" Portrait (Update)

UPDATE:  I don't think Chris Kyle will ever be 'old news' and it's sad that neither he, nor his friend Chad Littlefield, are around to see how the nation has embraced them.  Not to mention that a trial is set to begin this week in Stephenson Texas not far from where Kyle and Littlefield were gunned down by
Eddie Ray Routh, 27, whom both men were trying to help adjust to life after wartime. Routh is expected to plead and NGRI defense. In a rambling post-arrest interview with police, Routh admitted to murdering both men in a rambling and sometimes incoherent confession. 

I previously posted a blog entry a few weeks ago (below) regarding the film (and the book) which was number one at the box office. It broke all profit records for this type of film, even as it was released in the post holiday calendar atmosphere often regarded as a movie burial ground.  "American Sniper" has now dropped from the number one slot to the number two slot, which is remarkable for a film that's been out for so long. 

Again, I urge people to read the book.  I'm not finished with it yet, but pushed through a good deal of it today while waiting for my truck to be repaired.  Really, it's a book inside a book and one of those 'books' reveals the toll the military life takes on family. You have to think Kyle's wife was a hero, too, for having to bear the worry, the heartache, the pain of living under circumstances which would have crushed others with less fortitude. There should be a special place in heaven for military wives and children.

Previously, I wrote:

I was reading the book "American Sniper" without having seen the film. Last night, I did see the film, and it's become clearer why the weakest among us (think Michael Moore) are compelled to attack it.

Much has been said already about the American Sniper movie and less about the book but there is one thing that must be understood. It may be described as a "war movie" but it's really a character study of a particular individual, a rare but fortunately not extinct type in American culture.

Chris Kyle was "that guy," the one who understood the basic foundational good heart of America and didn't waiver in his devotion and loyalty to its principles. He never doubted that America was better, even while acknowledging its flaws. Guys like Chris Kyle are an in-your-face reminder that America is better than its alternatives. He didn't make a lot of noise about it. He just was. What flies most in the face of  his detractors, and what antagonizes the compromisers, and the breast beating apologists, the mealy-mouthed politicians and other critics, is that he never apologized for himself, nor for killing America's enemies.

I think that the huge crowds watching the movie have found something lacking, something dishonest in the way President Obama and his left-leaning progressive political whores are trying to turn the country away from who we are. We're a free and independent people, and that's how we want to remain.  To remain free, you have to tell yourselves the truth. Except at the Obama White House, it's obvious that America is being threatened by Islamic extremists who want to murder, torture, rape, behead, burn, terrorize anyone who believes in basic American freedoms.  Most of what comes out of the Obama White House these days is designed around Hermann Goebbels' big lie theorem.  Mass deception can be achieved by the unrelenting repetition of lies and the bigger the lie, the more will be deceived. (think here of the 'offensive video' scenario barrage of brainwashing to which we were subjected for months).


For better or for worse , film has a higher profile than books do.  Movies reach a wider audience because, of course, you don't have to be able to read to watch and understand a film.  Even if you didn't speak the language, there are subtitles and dubbing.  So the "American Sniper" audience has risen to stunning proportions even going into the third week of its release. It fulfills the American need for honesty from its government, for democracy's requirement of honesty. That so many people would come to love and appreciate a hero who kills the enemy to save the rest of us is a phenomenon akin to the Knights of the Round Table legend.

American Sniper has broken all records for a film of this type, even though it was released in the dead money after Christmas holiday environment where films normally go to die.  I could tell it was film garbage season by the avalanche of bad Hollywood junked-up garbage movie trailers I was whipped with before watching American Sniper.

The Regal Cinema theatres where I saw the film was so packed that I thought there was a Harry Potter movie playing.  I was shocked when about 80 percent of that crowd marched into "American Sniper."  I had to sit in the third row front with my head craned upward like President Obama when he strikes one of his frequent phony camera-ready "gravitas" poses. I had waited to see the movie precisely because I wanted to avoid the discomfort of a crowded theatre. For this to have happened, three weeks into the release, could only mean that "American Sniper" struck a deep chord in the American psyche.

$200 million dollars for an R-rated movie never before happened in ten days of release.  Something is happening in America, and more and more people are realizing finally what it is.