Hollywood Shooting Itself in Foot with ‘American Sniper’ Slams
The film's shocking success isn't stopping industry vets from savaging the feature
“American Sniper’s” box office success could help Hollywood repair its knee-jerk, anti-military pose.
Just the opposite is happening so far.
We’re still counting how much cash “American Sniper” earned over the weekend, a number pushing past $90 million before the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday receipts are tallied. That’s for a title hitting theaters during an awful month for movies, directed by an 80-something auteur and lacking superheroes, car chases or rebooted material.
Yet two big Hollywood names are slamming “Sniper,” and it appears they aren’t alone.
It wasn’t hard to predict Michael Moore would rail against a movie that didn’t stop its narrative cold to deliver an anti-war, anti-American message. The far-left filmmaker tweeted that Chris Kyle, the most successful sniper in U.S. military history and the focus of the film, was a coward simply for fulfilling his job description.
My uncle killed by sniper in WW2. We were taught snipers were cowards. Will shoot u in the back. Snipers aren’t heroes. And invaders r worse
— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) January 18, 2015
Comic actor Seth Rogen managed to trump Moore by comparing “American Sniper” to a Nazi propaganda film.
American Sniper kind of reminds me of the movie that’s showing in the third act of Inglorious Basterds.
— Seth Rogen (@Sethrogen) January 18, 2015
TheWrap.com took the pulse of the entertainment community over the film’s sudden success and found an Academy insider fretting it celebrates a “sociopath.” The article suggests that view is held by some of the insider’s peers.
This weekend could have let Hollywood salute an icon like director Clint Eastwood and celebrate a pro-military film that still acknowledges the horrors of war.
Instead, it may be deepen the wedge between a large swath of the American movie going public and an industry which needs their coin to pay the bills.