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Alex Lo
SCMP Columnist
My Take
by Alex Lo
My Take
by Alex Lo

Hollywood sensitises ruthless war heroes

I love reading war books. The most recent one I finished was American Sniper, now turned into a blockbuster by Clint Eastwood. It's a great read, but left a terrible aftertaste.

I love reading war books. The most recent one I finished was , now turned into a blockbuster by Clint Eastwood. It's a great read, but left a terrible aftertaste. The late author, Chris Kyle, a Navy Seal sniper, was an unabashed self-described "regular redneck" and an all-American racist.

I haven't seen the movie yet. But from my past reading of similar books-turned-movies like and , I will predict what is most likely to be left out by Hollywood as far as its war heroes are concerned. Readers who have seen the movie can confirm or correct my predictions.

In his memoirs, Kyle suffered zero moral qualms about what he or other Americans did in Iraq. Whoever he killed must by definition deserve their fate, including women and children. By his count, he killed more than 250 people, more than half of whom were confirmed kills. "I couldn't give a flying f*** about the Iraqis ... I hate the damn savages," he wrote.

What came through was his complete indifference to - or rather venom for - the Iraqis, and his general bloodthirstiness. He competed with another Seal sniper for the highest kill scores.

From the outset, he declared: "I like war." When a military investigator questioned whether he wantonly killed an Iraqi civilian, he said: "I would like to but I don't." He incessantly complained about "pussies", superiors who held back "bad asses" like him from doing their job properly.

But I bet his movie character, played by Bradley Cooper, says none of those things in the movie. I bet there are many anguished, soul-searching moments about what he does as a highly trained killer. This is of course a guess, but I learned this modus operandi from watching Steven Spielberg's , which was based on the book by Canadian writer George Jonas about a team of Israeli agents sent to kill those responsible for the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre.

"We were doing God's work," the lead Israeli operative told Jonas. Like Kyle, he had no moral qualms. But in Spielberg's hands, that agent became a modern-day Hamlet. Hollywood's war heroes need to be sensitised as highly conflicted individuals - to keep up the propaganda, and for the Oscars.

 

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Hollywood sensitises ruthless war heroes
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