As a thorough examination of post-traumatic stress disorder and American soldiers coming home it falls short and I have seen better.

After wading through the hype of this film I was expecting more focus on PTSD and will maintain the highly acclaimed 1946 World War II epic The Best Years of Our Lives still stands as the vanguard.

Much of this review is based purely on my taste in war films. I'm more interested in the events that lead to war and the aftermath of war rather than those depicting the actual battles.

Saving Private Ryan is one exception. Full Metal Jacket is another. Schindler's List is another hallmark that without battle scenes shows the ugly, sad and horrifying parts of war.

True, there are other modern war movies I haven't seen yet, such as The Hurt Locker, so any such comparison is made solely on the films I have seen.

Knowing the movie was coming to Roanoke Cinemas, I decided to wait and spend my money locally. The problem with waiting is I knew it was going to be hard to watch it objectively in the wake of the flag burning and flag waving that came with it.

I cleared my mind as best I could, went by myself and watched.

Almost immediately you are struck with the realities of war, the snap decisions that must be made, the bloodshed and the brutality that comes with it.

The cinematography puts you squarely in the middle of the conflict as Bradley Cooper takes on the role of the late Chris Kyle, a Navy SEAL and the most lethal sniper in American military history.

Told over his four tours in the Middle East and ending with a footnote that tells us of his and his friend's untimely deaths at a shooting range by a troubled veteran, you get flashes of what this film should be about. I was ultimately left in a state of neutrality, leaving the theater gaining little understanding of Kyle, wanting to understand what being the most lethal sniper is like.

We see glimpses of it in Cooper's performance but I was never made to fully believe how deeply what he did and saw overtook his emotions. His interaction with wounded veterans upon returning home for good was given at best a cursory examination by director Clint Eastwood.

William Wyler's classic The Best Years of Lives hit us immediately on how three returning veterans were affected by World War II.

Its impact caught me in waves, telling the story of a successful banker played by Frederic March who finds profound sympathy with other returning veterans. His sympathy is conveyed by giving these vets high-risk loans at the dismay of his employer.

It examines the postwar life of a highly decorated bombardier played by Dana Andrews who, despite his achievements in the nose of a plane, finds it difficult to get work. He deals with the betrayal of his gold-digging wife who falls for another returning veteran.

The most pure performance of this classic is that of real Army veteran Harold Russell, who lost both his hands, and played returning sailor Homer Parrish. His performance showed how his devastating injury impacted his family, his girl and him. It showed how well the Navy trained him to use his hooks but as March's character says, couldn't train him to hold his girl or stroke her hair.

Wyler's movie adeptly let us into lives off all the central characters, their families and their struggles after coming home. Eastwood left me wanting that same detail in Kyle's life .

Cooper nearly convinces us but his performance could have given us more insight. The film could have skipped many of the segments of Kyle as a boy. and given us more of an understanding on Kyle the postwar veteran who kept his demons locked tightly inside.

The last part of American Sniper is what I believe we should have seen more of because that shows the care and concern he developed for wounded veterans.

Sienna Miller's performance as Kyle's wife was intense and believable and overall the movie is good and gives us a historical look into our country's involvement in the war in the Middle East. The battle scenes are haunting but compared with other war films there was something lacking.

The characters in The Best Years of Our Lives were more believable and have obviously left a deeper impression on me.

American Sniper is a movie worth seeing if you're wanting to see it for its action and conflict. It's not a movie I would watch over and over like I have The Best Years of Our Lives, Full Metal and Schindler's List.

It succeeds as a war movie, but not as full-blown character study of Chris Kyle — Lance Martin