Lying on a rooftop, with his finger on the trigger, Chris Kyle trains his gun on an Iraqi woman and boy. It was only the first scene of “American Sniper”, and I was hooked.

Just as the action climaxes, the film switches to a flashback from Kyle’s childhood, where he is training his gun on a deer. In two short scenes, the movie shows how far Kyle has gone from shooting deer with his father, to killing villainous men and becoming  the most lethal sniper in U.S. military history. From that point on, I was on the edge of my seat.

“American Sniper,” rated “R,” is directed by Clint Eastwood and premiered in theaters on Jan. 16. In less than a week, the war drama had been nominated for six Oscars and collected $90.2 million in ticket sales the first weekend alone, according to the New York Post.

Going into this movie, I didn’t have a clue of what to expect, besides a story about a sniper who went to war for America.

“American Sniper” tells the story of Chris Kyle, a Navy SEAL sniper played by Bradley Cooper; it follows his career, in which he became a legend due to his pinpoint accuracy, saving American soldiers on the battlefield in the Iraq War.

An addition to the movie that helped humanize it was the sensitive insight on the post-war mental burdens that Kyle and other soldiers struggled with after being in battle for so long. Kyle served four tours in war and when he returned home, he was still in  war psychologically. Everyday occurrences back home in Texas would trigger disturbing flashbacks to the war. In one scene from the film, Kyle was in a car repair shop back home and heard the drilling sounds from the people working on cars and he had a flashback to a scene in Iraq when he witnessed a man using a drill as his weapon. Reliving the memory, Kyle became frantic to leave the car shop quickly, to escape the sound of the drill.

The movie was rated “R” for strong war violence, and some scenes in battle were too disturbing for me to watch. The film has attracted criticism, including from the New York Times, for both the violence and for portraying the American army in too positive a light.

Overall, however, the movie was absorbing, and because it is based on a true story, it felt as though it was worth watching. Despite its running time, which is well over two hours, the film seems to move quickly and I was swept along in the action. The movie’s finale is shocking.

Cooper stands out as the soldier Kyle. His emotionally stunted stares when he is in a “meltdown mode” are in themselves worth the price of admission.