The Films of Clint Eastwood: Critical Perspectives ed. by Matt Wanat and Leonard Engel (review)

Clint Eastwood movies just keep on coming. Since celebrating his eightieth birthday in 2010 he has directed and produced six pictures of his own, produced and starred in one by a different director, and served in all three capacities on another film (The Mule) that is nearing completion at this writing.

Not surprisingly, books about Eastwood also keep on coming. In their 2018 volume The Films of Clint Eastwood: Critical Perspectives, editors Matt Wanat and Leonard Engel bring together fourteen essays (plus an introduction and an afterword) meant to complement earlier collections by focusing about half of its attention on the 2014 war drama American Sniper, which is of special interest by virtue of its phenomenal box office success and its intensely controversial nature, dividing critics over whether it celebrates or denounces the American war in Iraq and whether the real-life title character—record-setting Navy SEAL sharpshooter Chris Kyle—is meant to be hailed as a hero or scorned as a conscience-free killer. Several other essays deal with earlier war-related films—most notably Heartbreak Ridge (1986), the World War II pictures Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima (both 2006), and Gran Torino (2008), about a war veteran—and thereby place the meditations on American Sniper in a broader thematic context.

One of the most insightful essays is Kathleen Brown and Brett Westbrook's aptly titled "Life Takers and Heart Breakers: Moral Injuries in Clint Eastwood's War Films," which gets beyond the bullets to explore the lasting damage done to combatants by "moral injury," a term drawn from a 1991 article by an army psychiatrist. While they find little sign of moral sensitivity in such early Eastwood vehicles as Brian G. Hutton's Where Eagles Dare (1968) and Kelly's Heroes (1970), the writers make a strong case that Eastwood's own war movies intelligently probe the consequences of wartime service in the lives of those who have endured it. Working their way up to American Sniper, they conclude that Kyle evidently has "no thoughts about the humanity of the Iraqis he encounters, no regrets at all about killing" (164), and comes closer to being a cold, disinterested slayer than any previous Eastwood military protagonist. I concur with this judgment, which is borne out by the moral apathy demonstrated by Kyle in the memoir that inspired Jason Hall's screenplay.

A similar verdict is given in "Another Fistful: The American Sniper Franchise and Clint Eastwood's Post-9/11 American War Film as Neo-Western" by David Buchanan, himself a military officer who served in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. Buchanan analyzes the narrative changes that transform Kyle's problematic memoir into a super-problematic movie—the elaboration of an evil Iraqi antagonist called Mustafa, barely mentioned in the memoir, is one clear example—and shows how the film makes Kyle a "scapegoated hero" whose exploits and subsequent death (he was murdered after his wartime service) confirm "how easy it is to turn war reportage into war legend, and, after the purge that the hero's death brings, leave a society ready to begin such a cycle again." This task is consummated by the film's climactic footage of Kyle's actual funeral in the cavernous Texas Stadium, which Buchanan calls the movie's "final pandering gesture" to a society happy to purge its feelings of guilt by undergoing an experience of vicarious mourning (184–85). I find this a far more persuasive view of American Sniper than the one set forth by Engel in his essay "American Sniper and the Critics: A Note on the Art of Interpretation," where the funeral is described as a scene of "overwhelming and . . . unforgettable dramatic poignancy" (234). Debate about American Sniper shows no sign of dying down, and this collection commendably airs a variety of opinions on the subject.

The book's weaker selections include...