A Quote by Mike Barnicle

'American Sniper' is a movie. War is a grim reality and with us still.

Mike Barnicle

Quote Topics

American Grim Movie Reality Still Us War

Quote Author

Mike Barnicle
American - Journalist
Born: October 13, 1943

'American Sniper' is a movie whose politics are so ludicrous and idiotic that under normal circumstances it would be beneath criticism. The only thing that forces us to take it seriously is the extraordinary fact that an almost exactly similar worldview consumed the walnut-sized mind of the president who got us into the war in question.

Matt Taibbi

I served as a Marine sniper for three years, and I believe the film 'American Sniper' depicted what we do perfectly.

Dakota Meyer

Make no mistake. This is a war on rural America. ... It is chilling to watch people who joined the military to defend American citizens point rifles on American soil at American citizens and women and children. A sniper rifle is not due process.

Matt Shea

'American Sniper' is a film that erases history, spectacularizes violence, and reduces war and its aftermath to cheap entertainment, with an underexplained referent to the mental problems many vets live with when they return home from the war.

Henry Giroux

Even in the realest American cinema that I see, there's still not that sense that this is reality. There's still that sense that you are watching a movie. And hopefully, if we did get our jobs right, that sense disappears when you watch this movie.

Joshua Leonard

I think 'American Sniper' is anti-war. It demonstrates the agony of the decision-making that goes on.

Michael Cimino

World War II was a historical event, but also a movie genre, and 'Fury' occasionally prints the legend. The rest of it is plenty grim and grisly. Audience members may feel like prisoners of war forced to watch a training-torture film.

Richard Corliss

The American War of Independence is the expulsion of the intrusive elements, alien to the American essence. If American reality is the reinvention of itself, whatever is found in any way irreducible or unassimilable is not American.

Octavio Paz

[T]ake the war on drugs. The average American says, "The war on drugs has been beneficial." The rest of us see reality. This war has destroyed thousands of Americans. It is also a pretext for government agents to rob innocent people in airports and on the highways - they seize and confiscate large amounts of cash and say to their victims: "Sue us if you don't like it." And more and more judges, politicians, intelligence agents, and law-enforcement officers are on the take - as dependent on the drug-war largess as the drug lords themselves.

Jacob G. Hornberger

'Shall We Dance?' takes a small, exquisite Japanese movie and turns it into a big, stupid American movie. Still, it must be said that as glossy and overproduced as the thing is, it's a good big, stupid American movie.

Stephen Hunter

I wanted to do a war movie, a western and an alien movie. In reality, there are a lot of ugly things happening in the world.

Aaron Eckhart

With the Michael Moore movie, certain conservative talk show hosts call him un-American. Him and anybody else who says anything about the war... To question your country's policy, especially in a war that kills people, is definitely not un-American. It's probably the most patriotic thing you can do.

John Fogerty

Life is not a PG feel-good movie. Real life often ends badly. Literature tries to document this reality, while showing us it is still possible for us to endure nobly.

Matthew Quick

Life is inherently disturbing. That's why we've created the myths-to help us overcome, defend or deny, to transcend the grim reality of what here seems to be.