While director Clint Eastwood and scripter Jason Hall take some care in muddying the morality at play, they still err on the side of sainthood in painting their portrait of Chris Kyle.

A freewheeling orgy of misdirection (from Paul Thomas Anderson), misunderstanding (from the audience) and Method-tinged emoting (from an eye-popping cast).

This isn’t Leaving Las Vegas with playing cards replacing the booze bottles – which is fine since the film is content operating as a tightly wound drama about a man with self-destructive impulses.

To serve as a distraction, a gazillion dollars worth of CGI is tossed onto the screen, but the results surprisingly run hot-and-cold.

Steve Carell is scary-good, subjugating all traces of the familiar comic spark very much in evidence in his previous films.