Based on the autobiography of former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, American Sniper is a confident and convincing account of the most lethal sniper in American military history. Taken just as a war movie, it certainly has its issues but as biopics go, it has much more personality and perspective than other films in the genre that I’ve seen this season. The film is also aided greatly by a superb, understated performance by Bradley Cooper, who was just recently nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor.

We follow Kyle in flashbacks through his life, starting out with his first hunting trip and his father’s early implementation of a strict code of right and wrong. After seeing footage of a terrorist attack on television, he feels compelled to enlist as a Navy SEAL and protect the country that he loves more than anything. After meeting and eventually marrying his wife Taya, played by Sienna Miller, the two struggle to keep their family together during Kyle’s four voluntary tours of duty in Iraq. While these home-front scenes are crucial to the film’s story, the majority of the movie depicts Kyle’s time in Iraq as a successful rooftop sniper.

The most effective combat scene appears at the film’s opening, which retells Kyle’s first sniper kill in Iraq. It starts quietly on a rooftop, with Kyle following a US convoy through his scope when as woman and her child appear from a seemingly abandoned building. When the woman hands off an explosive to her son, it’s made clear that the decision for Kyle to intervene is one that’s left up almost entirely to him. It’s a gripping opening sequence and director Clint Eastwood is able to present this moral dilemma with a masterful amount of dramatic tension and visual finesse.

Unfortunately, the subsequent depictions of the war in Iraq are generic and one-dimensional, especially in comparison to this scene. The main storyline in Iraq, which pits Kyle against a rival Syrian sniper who is set up like the Lex Luthor to Kyle’s Superman, is very hokey and diminishes any sense of realism that the film attempts to establish. Fortunately, the scenes at home with Cooper and Miller are handled with much more tact and tenderness and the two are able to build up a very palpable chemistry throughout the movie.

Cooper has excelled most recently in extroverted roles that make use of his motormouth persona but here, he is able to focus that energy inward while still maintaining a steady balance of humble virtue and self-deprecating charm. American Sniper will no doubt be compared to other contemporary war films like the masterpiece The Hurt Locker, which took home the Oscar for Best Picture in 2009. While Sniper is admittedly not of that caliber, it’s a bold piece of filmmaking that adds a new perspective on the psychological effects of prolonged warfare.