ABOVE: Filmmaker Michael Moore and actor Seth Rogen – both no strangers to film-centered controversy – are among the celebs weighing in on the new film American Sniper.
This post has been updated with additional comments from Moore and Rogen.
TORONTO — American Sniper was the No. 1 movie at the box office on its first weekend in wide release — prompting filmmaker Michael Moore to take aim at snipers.
On Sunday, the Bowling for Columbine director said they “aren’t heroes.”
American Sniper, starring Bradley Cooper and directed by Clint Eastwood, is based on the book by Chris Kyle, American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History.
Kyle boasted of 255 kills, of which 160 were confirmed by the U.S. military.
The Navy Seal was killed in 2013 on a shooting range in Texas by Marine Corps veteran Eddie Ray Routh.
Moore, who earlier used Twitter to encourage people to see the movie Selma “because it is a piece of brilliant filmmaking, the likes of which are so rare,” tweeted:
Later, on Facebook, he elaborated.
“My dad was in the First Marine Division in the South Pacific in World War II. His brother, my uncle, Lawrence Moore, was an Army paratrooper and was killed by a Japanese sniper 70 years ago next month,” he wrote.
“My dad always said, ‘Snipers are cowards. They don’t believe in a fair fight. Like someone coming up from behind you and coldcocking you. Just isn’t right. It’s cowardly to shoot a person in the back. Only a coward will shoot someone who can’t shoot back.'”
Moore said his tweets were not directed at the movie American Sniper. He praised Bradley Cooper’s performance as “one of the best of the year” and gave kudos to the film’s editing, costumes, hair and makeup.
Moore was less enthusiastic about American Sniper director Clint Eastwood.
“Too bad Clint gets Vietnam and Iraq confused in his storytelling. And that he has his characters calling Iraqis ‘savages’ throughout the film,” he wrote.
Canadian actor-director Seth Rogen appeared to compare American Sniper to the Nazi propaganda film Stolz der Nation (Nation’s Pride), in which a German sniper killed Allied soldiers from a clock tower.
Later, though, Rogen denied he was comparing the films.
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