Clint Eastwood’s latest outing as a director takes us back to the horrors of Iraq in a real-life story.

Chris Kyle is a gun US Navy SEAL, but above and beyond that he’s a crack shot – a sniper.

Hidden on the rooftops of Fallujah and Sadr City, Kyle (Bradley Cooper) is assigned to protect the troops down in the dusty streets they hunt insurgents.

But he’s not always taking the strategic shot to protect his friends. Indeed, on many occasions Kyle’s there in the thick of the door-to-door operations weeding out the anti-US terrorists.

And targeting Iraqis through his rifle sights isn’t all that easy. There’s a scene where he’s got a middle-aged man, carrying a grenade launcher, in his sights.

He shoots the man, but then a street child comes by and tries to pick up the weapon.

The anguish on Kyle’s face is palpable. “Don’t do it, don’t do it,” he says to himself.

Back home in the southern states of the USA Kyle is a father himself. His wife Taya (Sienna Miller) can contact him via satellite phone even when he’s out on the job, state-of-the-art weapon cradled in his arms.

Kyle served on four tours of duty, racking up more than 1000 days in Iraq altogether. His sniper tally reached an amazing 160 kills.

His wife and two children love him, but as we well know these days post-traumatic stress disorders plague many war veterans for the rest of their days.

On the ground there a terrorist known as The Butcher is the US military’s main target. And the insurgents have an ace sniper of their own.

This man (Sammy Sheik) is a former rifle shooting medallist for Syria at the Olympic Games and accurate at distances of up to a mile (1600 metres) so it’s going to take all of Kyle’s skill to bring down the enemy sniper.