The film "American Sniper" opened to a smashing $105.3M over the Martin Luther King memorial weekend, drawing raves from former military veterans and cultural conservatives in small-town America, according to today's Wall Street Journal.

sniperNote to the WSJ: the movie based on the bloody, blow-their-head-off exploits of the US military's most deadliest sniper, also drew applause from the liberal crowd. This blogger watched the movie in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn, which is hardly a hotbed of USA, USA chanters and Pentagon boosters. The audience of mainly young hipsters and aging hippies cheered when US hero Chris Kyle, who is played by Bradley Cooper, took out his counterpart and former member of Iraq's Olympic shooting team with a bullet between the eyes. The shot of more than a mile was said to be impossible.

Cobble Hill theatergoers had the opposite emotional reaction when Kyle dies and is laid to rest with full military honors. Sobs could be heard when images of the funeral procession drove down Texas byways lined with flag-waving well-wishers. Word-of-mouth following the film was nearly 100 percent positive.

My bet is that less than one percent of the Cobble Hill crowd had any tie with America's military. [Yours truly received a high lottery number during the wind-down of the Vietnam War, which sent older friends either to Nam, Canada or underground. Not a college deferment to be had in the working class Sunset Park, Brooklyn neighborhood where I grew up.]

American Sniper is a PR gift to the Pentagon, which finds itself re-engaging in Kyle's old stomping grounds and expanding into neighboring Syria. Yemen, which is billed as an important American ally in the drone war against Al Qaeda, today looks like it may explode. The US military is on the march once again in the Middle East.

DOD's office of the Special Assistant for Entertainment in Los Angeles offers helps in producing motion pictures, TV shows, commercials, CD-ROM games and music videos. Navy, Marines, Army and Air Force staffers serve Hollywood from an office on Wilshire Blvd.

American Sniper, which was filmed in Morocco and LA, received military technical advice from 1 Force Inc. Sergeant Major James Dever USMC (Ret) founded 1 Force to handle movie battle choreography, weapons handling and safety, boot camp scene training and soldier dialog/protocol. He trained with Navy Seals, Army Special Services, New Zealand Special Air Service and served in Operations Eagle Pull (evacuation of Phnom Penh), Frequent Wind (evacuation of Saigon), Desert Shield, Desert Storm and Saber.

Directed by Clint Eastwood, American Sniper is a mid-budget film of $60M that did not receive across-the-board praise from critics.

Distributor Time–Warner's take from American Sniper was more than twice the previous King holiday record. Its financial success would have puzzled Dr. King, an advocate of non-violence.