Bradley Cooper is incredible in "American Sniper." The physical authenticity of his performance is trumped only by what Cooper does conveying the mental toll the job takes on Chris Kyle, the Navy SEAL sniper known for his expertise during four tours in Iraq.

Talking about anything else involving "American Sniper" is complicated. Recently nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture, the movie demolished box office records with a $90 million opening weekend. The movie played well too, earning pristine exit poll scores and inciting a wave of passionate defenders online.

Lesson No. 1 to snarky Twitter users: Be careful how you criticize "American Sniper." Lesson No. 2: Don't say obnoxious things just to spark a controversy.

Some discussion about the movie has turned into a liberal-conservative debate, somewhat surprising given how the film itself isn't particularly political. I'm not really interested in debating the merits of the Iraq war. I come at "American Sniper" as a movie and how it succeeds or fails as a movie.

This all leads to an opinion I almost dread sharing. While I loved Cooper's performance, I didn't particularly love the movie. Out of the eight movies nominated for Best Picture, it sits firmly in the back half of that list.

This opinion is only minorly influenced by director Clint Eastwood's egregious use of a terribly fake-looking doll in place of an actual baby. For me, the (Oscar-nominated) screenplay clunks along like a typical biopic, relying on unnecessary Hollywood plotting that undermines Cooper's performance.

It may be that every word and moment in "American Sniper" is based on something that actually happened, but the movie assembles those moments in an unauthentic way. The movie takes the typical creative liberties (combining events, composite characters, thematizing dialogue, etc.) without really putting them together in a way that enhances the portrait of the central character.

I generally like Clint Eastwood as a director, and his unshowy, economical shooting style provides clarity and competence to the film's war scenes. Lesser directors use battle sequences as a creative sizzle reel, whereas Eastwood knows how to keep the film focused on its protagonist. It allows Cooper to dig into the performance, and he brings intensity and humanity to a character underserved by the screenplay itself.

Eastwood and screenwriter Jason Hall have a looser grasp on Kyle's homelife. In their defense, Kyle's difficulty adjusting to life after war isn't as easy to dramatize as a battlefield. The biggest letdown of the film is how it depicts Kyle's wife (Sienna Miller). Everything she says sounds like something from the "Screenwriter's Handbook for Worried Wives," and the conflict between them never finds a natural space in the overall story being told. Some of Miller's biggest scenes are while talking on the phone, or while holding a lifeless baby doll prop - meaning she's too often forced to carry a scene without any support or substance.

Even with these basic complaints, I kept thinking I should be enjoying the film more than I was while watching it. Which leads me to a complicated question: Am I letting all the outside bluster of the movie cloud my own opinion?

While politics are playing into opinions on both sides of the movie, I don't think Eastwood is trying to make a statement beyond showcasing the actions of one Navy SEAL. I never took issue with the film's depiction of events in Iraq or with Kyle's worldview. The movie plays things pretty fair, showing us a character who believes in what he's doing, even when others around him begin to lose faith in it.

Even more of the discussion surrounds the tragic events of Kyle's life after his military career. The movie, admittedly, takes an awkward approach to this, though Eastwood doesn't have a lot of choices given the circumstances. I'm OK with where "American Sniper" ends, if only because the complete picture of what happened won't be fully understood for some time.

Ultimately, I can only cling to how the story of "American Sniper" is told, and outside Cooper's performance, I feel like I've seen better versions of the same story, be it in "The Hurt Locker" or "Zero Dark Thirty." "Sniper" deviates some in how it focuses on Kyle's life outside of the military, but those moments lean harder on conventional storytelling devices (straight from the Worried Wives handbook).

Yet "American Sniper" is a cultural phenomenon, and I can't for a second see that as a bad thing. Here is a movie about an American hero who had an unimaginable job during a grim period in modern history - and it's making "Iron Man" level money at the box office. It also addresses one of the most crucial issues in our culture right now. Veterans returning home from combat face monumental daily challenges, and their success and well-being should still be our greatest concern.

That message transcends lazy screenwriting, as well as my subjective criticism of it.

Tyler Wilson can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.