American Sniper Not Worthy Of Six Oscar Nominations

Bradley Cooper's American Sniper was disappointing! After all that hype and box-office-breaking records, it is, at best, an entertaining war movie. But does it deserve six Oscar nominations? Absolutely not.

You've got to admire Bradley Cooper's focus nowadays. Since he's become famous and wealthy, he has been using his own money and energy to try to make movies and Broadway shows on subjects that are close and dear to him. For instance, in 2011, he produced the film Limitless in which he played an author suffering from writer's block, living in New York, and then accidentally coming across a miracle drug called NZT-48 which helped bring his creative mojo back. The film was not a box-office success, but it was nevertheless very unique and creative.

Ever since he was a child, Cooper has been fascinated with The Elephant Man John Merrick. So, it's now his dream come true when Cooper is currently playing the lead in The Elephant Man on Broadway to great critical acclaim. He was the executive producer for Silver Linings Playbook in 2012 and for American Hustle in 2013 - two movies that need little introduction because he was the male lead in both of them and garnered him Oscar nominations for Best Actor.

And now in 2015, his American Sniper was released and earned him a third consecutive Oscar nomination for Best Actor. The other five nominations for this film are Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing, Sound Editing and Sound Mixing. I understand that David O. Russell (director of Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle) originally considered directing the movie at one point, but a deal with Warner Brothers didn't work out. Then Steven Spielberg was interested in the project but he subsequently moved on as well. Eventually, Clint Eastwood became the director as well as one of the producers of the film.

When Cooper initially bought rights to the movie, he intended to only produce it with Chris Pratt starring, but he later changed his mind and decided to take up the role himself. In fact, he bulked up 40-plus pounds to look like the real sniper Chris Kyle and worked with a vocal coach twice a day to talk with a heavy Texan accent like Kyle. Having seen some footage of Kyle, I personally think that Chris Pratt would have been a better choice because he looks like a twin brother of Kyle's.

Apparently Cooper built up his physique just by Olympic lifting and went from 185 pounds to 225 pounds for this role to look huge like Kyle and according to IMDb, he even sported a gut for the film. All the more respect goes to Cooper for demonstrating that he's not just a pretty face and the sexiest man alive according to People Magazine. But in spite of all these efforts, I think his performance in this film was less impressive than his acting in Silver Linings Playbook  and American Hustle. If those two previous roles didn't earn him an Oscar, I doubt very much whether this one would.

But I'm not an American and, therefore, cannot understand the patriotism and fascination with a Navy SEAL who is known as The Legend for achieving 160 kills in the Iraq war over four tours. To me, this is just another war movie that depicts the inhumane decisions soldiers in combat have to make to protect themselves and their comrades. The battle scenes were tense but I can count so many other war movies such as Black Hawk Down and Zero Dark Thirty which are 10 times better than American Sniper.

Some may argue that Chris Kyle's Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the film was provocative and sad. Yet, not even this subject was dealt with profoundly enough in this film when compared to the very successful TV drama Homeland.

What really bugs me about this film is the lack of authenticity when it comes to attention to detail. By now, you might have already heard about the big hoopla around the fake baby doll from the social media. I understand that when a production assistant approached director Clint Eastwood about real baby #1 being sick, and then real baby #2 being a no-show, Eastwood immediately settled with a doll faking the baby of Kyle and wife Taya (played by Sienna Miller) in the film. Now, Eastwood might have bragged about how Morocco looked like Iraq in the movie and how the battle scene in the sandstorm was executed to great precision. But a fake baby? How insulting to us the audience!!

I'm not sure whether Kyle's memoir (from which the screenplay was adapted) actually mentioned The Legend sniper talking to his wife while in full action on the battleground. But, for more than once, Kyle was communicating with Taya via something that looked like an Iridium satellite phone while others were firing away and he was supposed to watch the enemy so that he could protect his fellow marines. Now how credible was that?

I'm not an expert in sound editing in movies, so if this film won an Oscar for Film Editing, Sound Editing or Sound Mixing, I might not have an objection. But I would be very unpleasantly surprised if it won a Best Picture Award or a Best Actor Award even though I like Bradley Cooper and agree that he's come a long way from being a reformed alcoholic and a hotel bell boy in his youth!