Weinstein noted that the embrace of extreme right-wing Christian chauvinism, or Dominionism, which calls for the creation of a theocratic "Christian" America, is especially acute among elite units such as the SEALs and the Army Special Forces.
The evildoers don't take long to make an appearance in the film. This happens when television -- the only way the movie's characters get news -- announces the 1998 truck bombings of the American embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi in which hundreds of people were killed. Chris, now grown, and his brother, aspiring rodeo riders, watch the news reports with outrage. Ted Koppel talks on the screen about a "war" against the United States.
"Look what they did to us," Chris whispers.
He heads down to the recruiter to sign up to be a Navy SEAL. We get the usual boot camp scenes of green recruits subjected to punishing ordeals to make them become real men. In a bar scene, an aspiring SEAL has painted a target on his back and comrades throw darts into his skin. What little individuality these recruits have -- and they don't appear to have much -- is sucked out of them until they are part of the military mass. They are unquestioningly obedient to authority, which means, of course, they are sheep.
We get a love story too. Chris meets Taya in a bar. They do shots. The movie slips, as it often does, into cliched dialogue.
She tells him Navy SEALs are "arrogant, self-centered pricks who think you can lie and cheat and do whatever the f*ck you want. I'd never date a SEAL."
"Why would you say I'm self-centered?" Kyle asks. "I'd lay down my life for my country."
"Why?"
"Because it's the greatest country on earth and I'd do everything I can to protect it," he says.
She drinks too much. She vomits. He is gallant. He helps her home. They fall in love. Taya is later shown watching television. She yells to Chris in the next room.
"Oh, my God, Chris," she says.
"What's wrong?" he asks.
"No!" she yells.
Then we hear the television announcer: "You see the first plane coming in at what looks like the east side. ..."
Chris and Taya watch in horror. Ominous music fills the movie's soundtrack. The evildoers have asked for it. Kyle will go to Iraq -- a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 but which columnist Thomas Friedman, who could have been a consultant on the film, once said was attacked "because we could... do so--and extract vengeance. The historical record and the reality of the Middle East don't matter. Muslims are Muslims. And Muslims are evildoers or, as Kyle calls them, "savages." Evildoers have to be eradicated.
Chris and Taya marry. He wears his gold Navy SEAL trident on the white shirt under his tuxedo at the wedding. His SEAL comrades are at the ceremony.
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