Film

‘American Sniper’ shows hell of war

Eastwood, Cooper, Miller take on a legend of killing

American Sniper was always going to haul the weight of a nation on its shoulders theater to theater even before Thursday morning’s announcement officially anointed the movie about the life of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle as a big daddy with six nominations, including for best picture. American Sniper is directed by Clint Eastwood, justice-spitting detective Dirty Harry himself in an earlier acting lifetime. It stars Bradley Cooper, People magazine’s sexiest man alive in 2011 and was adapted for the screen by Jason Hall from a book written by Kyle, the SEAL credited as the most lethal sniper in U.S. military history, with 160 confirmed kills and 100 unconfirmed. A trailer of unbearable tension features a closeup of the sweaty, dirty, tense Cooper on a rooftop fighting the war on terror, deciding whether or not to pull the trigger on a young boy who may be carrying a huge and live grenade toward a group of U.S. soldiers Kyle is up there to protect.
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