American Sniper|390 Broadway, El Centro — The Date Factory and the Longest Shot

The climax happens on a rooftop in a sandstorm: Kyle takes a shot at a rival marksman more than two thousand yards away, the wind arrives, and the film's careful realism gives way to something closer to legend. On screen it is a derelict date factory in Sadr City. On the ground it is a 1920s warehouse at the west end of the 300 block of Broadway Street in El Centro, California, a hundred and ten miles east of San Diego in the Imperial Valley.

The building had been a grocery warehouse and later a cabinet shop. By 2014 it was empty, two storeys of concrete and brick with the roof parapet Eastwood needed, in a town where the production could work a whole block without negotiating a city. El Centro sits below sea level, gets over forty days a year above 40°C, and the light there does most of the work — dust, glare, and heat shimmer come free.

The structure still stands and it is private property. There is nothing to enter and nothing to buy. What you can do is stand on the public sidewalk across Broadway and look up at the parapet, which is exactly the angle the second unit shot from.

Come in the morning before the valley heat sets in, and bring water even then. The scale is the surprise: the roofline that carried the film's biggest moment is two floors up on an ordinary small-town street. Photo: representative disused desert industrial building.