American Sniper: 10 burning questions
Alice Vincent
19 February 2015 • 8:08am
Was Mustafa really an Olympian? Did The
Butcher use a drill? How good a shot was Chris Kyle? Your American Sniper
questions answered
1.
Was Chris Kyle really called ‘Legend’?
Yes. As the film shows, Kyle earned the
nickname after killing a number of people as a sniper. But in his memoir, American Sniper:
The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in US Military History, Kyle
explains that there was a particular incident which earned him the moniker: when he shot
down the beachballs insurgents were clinging to to help them swim across a
river in Fallujah.
2.
Did he really kill 250 people?
Kyle earned his title of America
But Kyle’s co-author, Jim DeFelice,
counters that he had to report each kill to his commanders. Furthermore, Kyle
told Time magazine that the snipers had to “fill out an assessment of what
happened throughout the day. The time, the place, the caliber used, the distance he was, what
exactly he was doin', where he was standin', what he was wearin'. It's all in
the detail.” Plus he “personally kept track.”
As for the difference between 160 confirmed
kills and 255 probable kills, the former are those which a witness has verified is dead.
3.
Was a $180,000 bounty really placed on Kyle’s head?
Not quite. When Kyle was interviewed on
American chat show Conan he explains that a bounty starts at about $20,000 and
can reach as high as $80,000, so one worth $180,000 is rather unlikely.
Furthermore, the insurgents put a bounty on any American sniper’s head, not
just his. Interestingly, though, he was given a nickname by the insurgents that
doesn’t crop up in the film: al-Shaitan Ramadi - which translates as ‘the Devil
of Ramadi’’
4.
Did Kyle kill Mustafa?
No. This was one of the most fictionalised
parts of the film. Mustafa, or the rather ruder Kaiser F—in' Söze in American
Sniper, was the name given to an enemy sniper who had reportedly competed in
the Olympics as a marksman for Syria
Furthermore, it looks like Mustafa was
never an Olympic athlete - not the Syrian one, anyway. According to Quora user
Nicholas Wolaver, only one of Syria
5.
Did The Butcher really use a drill to kill and torture his victims?
Depressingly, yes. The Butcher, the
nickname given to Abu Deraa, an Iraqi Shia warlord who was known for his gory methods. A Telegraph
story from November 2006 reads: “Deraa's trademark method of killing is a drill
through the skull rather than a sword to the neck, but his work rate is just as
prolific as the former al-Qaeda leader's and shows the same diabolical artistry.”
6.
Did Kyle kill a child?
No. The film adaptation of his memoirs
appears to have combined two separate incidents. In the book, Kyle’s first kill
- the only time he killed someone who wasn’t a male combatant - was a woman who
came out of a house with her child, but approaches the convoy alone to set off a grenade. On a separate
occasion, Kyle encountered a child who was sent to pick up a rocket launcher in
the street. However, he didn’t fire. He writes in the book: “ I wasn't going to
kill a kid, innocent or not. I'd have to wait until the savage who put him up
to it showed himself on the street.” In the film, not only is the child killed,
but the woman leaves him for dead to throw a grenade.
7.
Did Kyle’s father invent the ‘sheep, sheepdogs and wolves’ speech?
No. The motivational dinner table chat in
which Kyle’s father tells him “there are three types of people in the world:
wolves, sheep and sheepdogs” has a far longer history - although not in Kyle’s
memoir. As Slate point out, Hall made up the scene, but the analogy comes from
Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman’s 2004 book On Combat. Grossman claims he
borrowed it from an “old war veteran”,
and uses the phrase in relation to the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq
8.
Was Kyle angered by his comrade Mark Lee’s disillusionment over war?
No. In the film, Kyle claims his best
friend and fellow sniper Mark Lee caused his own death after he hears Lee
express his disillusionment
with war in a letter he sent his mother before he died. It causes an argument
between Kyle and his wife Tyra. But this is a complete fabrication: Kyle actually speaks highly of
Lee’s letter in his book.
9.
Was Kyle really as big as Bradley Cooper?
Certainly. In Cooper’s words, the 16.5
stone sniper was “wasn’t ripped. He wasn’t sinewy. He was just a bear.” The quadruple-Oscar
nominated actor told the Navy Times he was consuming 6,000 calories and
working out for five hours a day to pack on two stone of pure muscle. It
wasn’t, his trainer Jason Walsh told Men’s Health, always easy: “We had to
force-feed him. His body just absorbed everything I threw at it.”
10.
Why is that Metallica flag there?
Eagle-eyed cinemagoers may have noticed
that a Metallica flag made its way over to Iraq
He was so much of a fan, in fact, that he
included them on his workout playlist, which Cooper listened to for motivation
during his own training for the film.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/american-sniper/facts/
Structure of the Lead :
WHO-Chris Kyle
WHEN-not given
WHAT-10 questions
WHY- not given
WHERE- not given
HOW- not given
Keywords :
1.memoir : 回憶錄.自傳
2. moniker : 綽號
3. discrepancy : 差異
4. caliber : 口徑.直徑
5. verify : 證實
6. standoff : 僵持
7. gory : 殘酷的
8. diabolical : 殘忍的
9. convoy : 護衛
10. grenade : 手榴彈
11. veteran : 老兵
12.disillusionment : 醒悟
13. fabrication : 虛構
14. sinewy : 肌肉發達的
