“Dirty Harry is obviously just a genre film but this action genre has always had fascist potential and it has finally surfaced…Dirty Harry is a deeply immoral movie.” — Pauline Kael
Since the stylistic war represented by his Harry Callahan character and its critique by Pauline Kael there is always something about the isolation of lone (anti-)heroes, whether mercenary cowboys or mercenaries with Constitutional oaths. In Hollywood it's still always the
star vehicle and
American Sniper is the empty seat filled by the latest hunk, Bradley Cooper. But like Eastwood's discomfort and unwillingness to perform an actual ideological act like a real speech but rather perform with an empty chair at the RNC in order to negate the effect of his Chrysler commercial as a defense of Democrats bailing out the US auto industry, this latest movie is an attempt to fill seats.
American Sniper was expected to do well this weekend after an impressive limited release, but not this well: The Clint Eastwood-directed war film took in an estimated $90.2 million—and broke a few records.
The Oscar-nominated film set a new record for a January opening by taking in $30.5 million on Friday, breaking the mark set by Cloverfield ($17.2 million on Jan. 18, 2008). January is a notoriously slow month at the box office, so Sniper‘s debut is particularly eye-opening.
American Sniper also took a couple records from James Cameron’s Avatar, which previously held the records for biggest January weekend performance (it made $68.5 million the first weekend of 2010) and biggest gross for a single day ($28.5 million) in January. This is big for Sniper, especially given the sluggish starts for Clint Eastwood films lately: His last two films, 2014’s Jersey Boys and 2011’s J. Edgar, opened with just $13.3 million and $11.2 million, respectively.
This movie will resonate with those who have made the sacrifices that come with military service as well as those wanting the cinematic catharsis of combat that movies and FPS games give, but it still is a genre film with genre structure and values whose corporate goal is to sell commodities, whether seat tickets, rentals, or DVDs. The motives established by our continuing, yet officially ended wars in Iraq and Afghanistan plus the established audience for Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper probably accounts for the first weekend success.
Aside from the usual rooting for the industry's PR measures and the usual run-up to the Oscars, this may be the decoy to promote Jersey Boys. This film is a reasonable adaptation of a memoir like We Were Soldiers, because without the battle of Fallujah in 2004, there are few actual recent pitched battles for US forces in recent wars. And in terms of less tragedy although it has the same structure and feel, there is the story that never made it to an adaptation, the book Shooter, not to be confused with the adaptation of Stephen Hunter's book, Point of Impact that became the movie Shooter. All US sniper movies still devolve to the measure of Carlos Hathcock and not Alvin York. But despite the juxtaposition of home and battlefield, American Sniper is still a genre film which for sniper films it's always as Bob Lee Swagger says "I don't think you understand, these boys killed my dog".
Powered by Clint Eastwood's sure-handed direction and a gripping central performance from Bradley Cooper, American Sniper delivers a tense, vivid tribute to its real-life subject.