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psijac wrote:

fickman wrote:they were mostly two dimensional.

Everything elese seems pretty one dimensional.

I gave them too much credit. One dimensional is actually the phrase I meant to use.

Well written review. . . I think we're on the same page.

I have mixed reviews of the film.

I love the story. I love what it stands for. I thought Bradley Cooper nailed his role and delivered a great performance. I also thought the editing and directing were great, and I really appreciated the lack of soundtrack (they could have easily ruined a few signature moments by blaring "Born in the USA" in the background).

Still, I found the script to be very trite and elementary. There was no subtlety, and it exchanged performance, innuendo, and metaphor for surface-level spoon feeding of very cliche concepts - even if they were genuinely a part of this story, the script would summarize a point in two lines of dialogue instead of letting the audience experience it for themselves. I wonder if they didn't try to bite off too much by telling the entire life story. . . they had to move the story so fast that it never developed the depths of the characters.

I was touched by the ending, but it hit me that my emotions were relating to the real Chris Kyle story and my memories of the time around his funeral. The real footage impacted me. My emotional / inspirational response was not connected to the characters from the film; they were mostly two dimensional.

I'm not knocking the film. I enjoyed it and it's worthy of discussion, but it could have been so much more.