American Sniper- Trey Morris

              Chris Kyle was nothing more than a Texan man who dreamed of becoming a cowboy, but in his thirties he found out that maybe his life needed something different, something where he could express his real talent, something that could help America in its fight against terrorism. So he joined the SEALs in order to become a sniper. After marrying, Kyle and the other members of the team are called for their first tour of Iraq. Kyle's struggle isn't with his missions, but about his relationship with the reality of the war and, once returned at home, how he manages to handle it with his urban life, his wife and kids. The movie scored a whopping three on the representation test. Under the women portion of the test, American sniper was only able to cross off one requirement from the list. 
Although this movie is about our armed forces in the United states (which in most cases is predominately male) it could’ve been more creative in finding more women roles throughout the movie. With this being said, the film was only able to knock off the ‘Does the film represent women more than “objects for the male gaze”?’ category, leaving six other categories on the check list. Under the men section of the representation test, it was able to successfully complete both ‘Does the Film include one or more men of color, in speaking roles, who are NOT reduced to racial stereotypes?’ and ‘Does the film include men in non-stereotypical roles?’. In my opinion, American sniper did a decent job in this portion of the test considering two of its three points came from this section. In the patriotic film, there is one main woman that stands out; Kris Kyle’s wife. Although this could be considered by some of a role that lands in the category of “object for the male gaze”, I believe that she portrays an independent character. Sienna Miller, who plays Taya (the wife of Kris Kyle), does a great job in playing the wife without being helpless or seeming as if she is relying on a man. American Sniper was unable to complete any of the tasks from the remaining sections of the test and managed a grade of D according to this test. In some cases, this may be a fair way to grade or judge a movie, but in cases such as this one or ones that deal with a historic or patriotic film, this form of critiquing a film in no way trustworthy. I’m not quite sure what would make this test more effective but I think this test is kind of biased in that it has more questions that have to do with women that questions that have to deal with men. Another problem I see with the rep test is that it restricts the questions with things such as “not limited to” which causes a movie that may include something that fits into one of these categories to miss out on points even though this material was included.

Rep test