The twist in Steven Spielberg's 'American Sniper'

In early May, Steven Spielberg signed on to direct American Sniper, despite talk just two months earlier that the director's next DreamWorks project would be about the border conflict in Kashmir. Decorated SEAL and sniper Chris Kyle wrote the book of the same name based on his experiences over multiple deployments to combat zones, including Iraq. With over 150 confirmed kills, he became the military's most deadly sniper. Bradley Cooper had picked up the film rights to the bestseller, which takes a sometimes flippant tone about the job of killing. Sounds like a straightforward military movie, right? No.

In this week's New Yorker, a feature elaborates on the full story and tragic ending to Kyle's life. After leaving active duty in 2009, Kyle struggled with PTSD and maladaptive behaviors connected to his stress, like heavy drinking. He started organizing activities like antelope hunts with other veterans to help them transition to life at home. A desperate woman at his kids' school heard about Kyle, and begged him to help her son, Eddie Ray Routh, who was also struggling with PTSD. In early February, Kyle and another man took him to a shooting range. There, Routh turned the gun on them and killed Kyle and his friend. Now Kyle's story has a sad epilogue that wasn't present in the original property acquired by Cooper.

There's another twist in the New Yorker story that could call into question Kyle's book. He told a number of stories, like of a time he killed two carjackers and was let off by the police, that have since been called into question. Kyle may have been a teller of tall tales. Will Spielberg accept these embellishments, or film a movie that's more in line with the confirmed facts?

Before director Kathryn Bigelow's successes with Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, military movies tended to bomb at the box office, and few received outstanding reviews from critics. Now, with the war wrapping up, the tide is changing, and Spielberg's film could be part of that shift. Stylistically and thematically, I picture the movie having shades of Munich and the post-invasion scenes in Saving Private Ryan, but I also see him injecting some of the melancholy home life present in E.T. In order for this movie to work, I think the screenplay (currently being penned by Paranoia's Jason Dean Hall) will have to alternate between combat sequences and those on the homefront, to better set up what will happen to Kyle at the end. But is there even a lesson or order to the madness of his death?

The story reminded me of the senseless killing of Robin Williams' character by a patient in Patch Adams. After Kyle's murder, his wife Taya has aligned herself with the NRA, maintaining her support for guns. The New Yorker piece hints that the severity of Routh's delusions indicate that he may not have even had PTSD, but perhaps been bipolar or schizophrenic. But then again, many people with diagnoses of PTSD have murdered people, often spouses, after returning home. Spielberg has a complex story on his hands, with no happy ending. But for this veteran director to abandon another project, he must feel he has the key to unlock this story and bring it to the big screen.