Producer Harvey Weinstein has made an impassioned defence of the Clint Eastwood-directed war biopic American Sniper.
The film concerns the story of US navy seal Chris Kyle, known as the most successful sniper in US military history. An exceptional number of reviewers have recoiled from the patriotic celebration of the sniper's life which the film has already given rise to.
Talking to Indiewire, Weinstein said the biopic, which stars Bradley Cooper as Chris Kyle, deserved praise because it “introduces America to PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.)
“How about all these pieces of junk our kids are seeing?" he rhetorically queried. “Let’s go after them instead.” Weinstein also suggested that journalists were uninterested in true American heroes.
“No one was ever saying, ‘There’s a really good story about a human being who hands out money to children, builds houses, works hard. The Jimmy Carter story. You sit in an editorial meeting and [pitch] the Jimmy Carter story and they go, ‘f***** boring. I don’t give a s***.’ Our priorities are so screwed.”
Read our review of American Sniper here.
“When you say, ‘Hey, American Sniper’s got a hole in it,’ they salivate over that stuff. It’s sexy. If you’re going to write an article, just do one thing that used to happen all the time: do the research.”
The Oscar-nominated movie has taken in $316m globally (280m Euro) in its first three weeks on release. US First Lady Michelle Obama has praised American Sniper for its “complex, emotional depiction of a veteran and his family.”
“[It] reflects those wrenching stories that I’ve heard – the complex journeys that our men and women in uniform endure. The complicated moral decisions they are tasked with every day. The stresses of balancing love of family with a love of country. And the challenges of transitioning back home to their next mission in life.”
