Clint Eastwood is a proficient filmmaker and an important voice in our cultural dialogue. Like John Ford, his recurring theme is heroism — and anti-heroism — at the edges of the American empire.

In the 21st century, that empire extends east, not west, toward the oil fields of Arabia. In the true story “American Sniper,” the cowboy who protects the stagecoach is Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper), a slow-talking, sharp-shooting Texan. At age 30, Chris joins the Navy SEALs, after seeing a news report about the 1998 terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. “Look what they’ve done to us,” he mutters to his younger brother Jeff (Keir O’Donnell).

Because this is an Eastwood film, the definitions of “they” and “us” aren’t scrutinized in any meaningful way. The Kyle boys are taught by their Bible-slapping pappy that there are three kinds of people in the world: peaceful sheep, evil wolves and the wise sheepdogs who use “the gift of aggression” to intervene. When Chris intervenes in Iraq by kicking down the doors of terrified civilians, it’s doubtful that the director dwells on the irony between these consecutive lines of the hero’s dialogue: “We’re here to help” and “Look at me when I’m talking to you!”

While Chris is on the first of his four tours of duty, he learns that pregnant wife Taya (Sienna Miller in one of her best performances) is due to have a baby boy. Chris gets the news via satellite phone in the midst of a bloody gunfight. Whether or not it really happened, this technological tear-jerking feels like manipulation, as does the moment when Chris utters the name of his wounded buddy as he fires a super slo-mo shot at a narcissistic dark-skinned villain. The film is filled with this sort of hokum.

Although Chris suffers some pangs of conscience when his first victims are a mother and son who are smuggling mortars, he learns to suppress those feelings and even sneer at conscientious comrades such as the atheist who questions the mission. But on his periodic furloughs to the States, the quiet man hears the pounding of his tell-tale heart. Chris’ growing anger toward Taya and toward his own ungrateful nation sparks a redemptive subplot that enlists some real-life wounded warriors to snap us to attention. But then, in an act of artistic cowardice, Eastwood denies us the money shot that might put Chris’ well-documented fate into a larger context.

Taking potshots at “American Sniper” is like shooting fish in a barrel. So why should war-weary Americans see it? Because Eastwood remains a masterful action director, and this may be his last hurrah. Because Cooper is one of our best young actors, and he poured a lifetime of craft into stilling his character’s heartbeat. And because young volunteers have been at war for 14 futile years, and the next Chris Kyle deserves to be understood.