Sniper: Ghost Shooter (2016)

Tagline:

Heroes walk alone.

Movie Review:

Well, it has been a long time between reviews hasn’t it! I am going to try to get more reviews up far more frequently than one every sixteen months - shouldn’t be hard should it?! Time will tell!

Sniper: Ghost Shooter is the sixth in the Sniper series that started in 1992 with Tom Berenger as Thomas Beckett and Billy Zane as Richard Miller. Tom continued on making sequels by himself (parts 2 and 3) but for part 4 - Sniper: Reloaded - we were introduced to Thomas Beckett’s son, Brandon (played by Chad Michael Collins). In that film he was teamed up with Zane’s Richard Miller. The next film was the father-son combination, Sniper: Legacy. But for this latest outing - Sniper: Ghost Shooter - Richard Miller and Brandon Beckett are back, and they brought a whole team with them.

Starting with a group of terrorists transporting prisoners in inflatable boats along a Syrian river to their execution on the beach (you’ve all seen excerpts of the real-life versions of these), the film doesn’t take long to introduce us to our first pow-wow. Miller and his team have been sent on mission to intercept and rescue the prisoners (though amusingly, through one conversation with the Colonel the go ahead is only given when it was identified that the prisoners were American!). Anyway, it’s a by the numbers but reasonably exciting first battle full of CG-squibs and a pretty crap (it must be said) computer generated helicopter and drone combination. Beckett’s hesitation to shoot the child-aged executioner compromises the mission and sets up a character flaw that the viewer can relate to.

Following some downtime, the team are brought on to do a private job for the Colonel (played by Dennis Haysbert of Jarhead 3: The Siege - another decent modern military action film) - protect a natural gas pipeline that runs through Eastern Europe and take out a Russian gangster. The team are ambushed by unseen rival snipers and friendly lives are lost. How did the enemy get the drop on them? Becket has his suspicions, and the punching-out of a senior Georgian Colonel sees him on probation in the snowy mountains where even more shootouts happen - I lost count at around five - good news for action fans. The splitting of the team and the tangents in plot could have been done a little better, but it serves the purpose of helping eliminate possibilities as to who is the snitching on their location to the enemy at every battle.

The film production is high for DTV with very little shaky-cam, though at times we do get the classic Seagal time-montage employment of fast moving camera swishes and flashing pulses. Director Don Michael Paul (who directed the previous film Sniper: Legacy, as well as war film Company of Heroes and franchise-reboot Tremors 5) does a fine job ensuring that the action is always clear and never obscured by poor camera work. Much of the shooting is shown through the sniper scope, with follow-on body damage. I particularly enjoyed the backdrops chosen for the Georgia portion of the film with a few great scenes in the snow.

We learn a little about the team as the movie progresses, but the focus is on the two stars. Robin Slater (Stephanie Vogt) gets a little more screen time as the more technical officer, but the rest of the team are delegated to grunt status. The Georgian equivalent to Zane’s Miller character, Andrei Mashkov (played by Ravil Isyanov) is a nice contrast to the clean-cut American soldiers and adds some humour as well. As for script; the main dialogue between Becket and Miler is fine, but some of the lines spouted by others were a bit average, one of the worst offenders coming from Slater: “Something’s wrong. I feel it in my bones.” states the Colonel. “I don’t trust bones. I trust 1’s and 0’s.” Gah!

Sniper: Ghost Shooter is another solid, straight-forward entry in the franchise. Collins performs well in the lead and we did not get shafted on Zane screen-time either. Good fun for modern military action fans that can handle some cheap-ish looking computer graphics.

Highlight:

I mentioned a groan-inducing line earlier, but there was also some gold from Georgian soldier Andrei Mashkov: “Hello to my Russian friend!” riffing on Scarface, referring to Becket only as “American” and even quoting John McClane's “Yippee ki yay”.

Trailer:

Sniper: Reloaded (2011)

Tagline:

Deep in the Congo: Marine... Peace Keeper... Killer.

Movie Review:

I was a big fan of the first Sniper film when I was younger. A kid at school obsessed with military weapons leant me a copy on VHS and told me it was a great movie. He was right. Different to the usual action movie I was used to, Sniper was more about stealth and outwitting your enemy. A thinking mans action movie with Tom Berenger as the Sniper and Billy Zane as his protege. Berenger has starred in two direct-to-DVD sequels that I have sitting on the shelf but have not gotten around to watching yet but this is the first time Zane has returned to the franchise. Sniper: Reloaded is the fourth in the series but is really something of a reboot (hence the "Reloaded" monicker).

Sniper: Reloaded stars Chad Michael Collins as Sgt Brandon Beckett, the son of Berenger's character Thomas Beckett, a fact reaffirmed early on when a photo of Thomas is displayed pinned to his son's paperwork (can we even call that a cameo?). The movie is told as after-the-fact events, detailed by Beckett during a pre-court marshall breakdown with his superior officers wanting to know what happened in the Congo. He explains, that when on a routine peace-keeping mission with his team for the UN, new orders are given to locate, retrieve and protect a Jean Van Brunt (Rob Fruithof), a local Congo resident of European descent of interest to the UN. Upon retrieving Van Brunt, he is shot at by a sniper and killed, the team of soldiers firing back and trying to find cover. One by one Beckett's team is killed by the sniper, so Becket makes a run for it. He is shot and falls into a pit, unconscious, and presumed dead by the sniper assassin.

When Beckett awakes he is having his wounds attended to by a local hunter, Martin Chandler (Patrick Lyster), who rescued him. The two go back to the house of Van Brunt looking for a reason as to why he was a target and discover his teenage daughter, armed and minding the fort. Beckett decides to take her to the safety of the UN installation but first they detour back to Chandler's camp. It's been overrun by milita stealing the orphan children he was safeguarding and a firefight ensues. The rebels escape with the children... and this is when Richard Miller (Billy Zane) is informed that Beckett (son of Beckett) needs some assistance and flies over to the Congo.

Zane doesn't show up until the 38 minute mark - I was beginning to get worried we were looking at a bait-and-switch here, but his involvement worked well in the story and there was no real need for him to show up earlier, so I wont hold that against the producers. He brings the laughs in this with his dry humour and antics. He is so straight-forward and efficient that it becomes funny at times as he quickly moves from one item of business to another. In his first scene training junior snipers on the agony of long missions, he is asked 'What do you do if you need to pee?' and he simply replies "Go in your pants. I love it so much I'm going in my pants right now." Zane also has a great Dolph Lundgren from the opening scene of The Expendables moment ("Too low") in the final minutes of Sniper: Reloaded; let's just say he shoots a little too close to somebody with a high powered rifle and we get to see the aftermath of it.

There is some great location work on display here, as you would expect being filmed in Africa. Lot's of opportunities to take National Geographic style footage of giraffes, rhinoceros and elephants in the wild. I was a little disturbed at the hunter saying how beautiful Africa and the animals are, knowing full well he probably wants to mount a lion head on his wall. There's also some interesting camera work during the fire-fights; a camera is mounted onto the rifle so that you can see the soldier's face as he shoots at enemies. There's a bit of the Saving Private Ryan fast-motion camera work as well that is as nauseating to me as it was in that movie, but it's not used that often. A lot of the shots are rightfully taken through the scope of Beckett or Miller's rifle.

Chad Michael Collins is the lead here and he does a fine job, though Zane's character trumps him in the coolness stakes. Chad makes for a very believable young soldier and I must not be the only one to think so; his previous roles on TV have been soldiers almost consistantly. Being a sniper movie he doesn't get any punchfighting in - it's all strictly firearms in this movie - but it's all very solid material. Pistols get pulled out for close encounters and it's all very clean and methodical on the goodies side, with the baddies firiing automatic weapons wildly at anything that moves. All except for the antagonist of the piece, the mysterious sniper that shot Beckett in the beginning. A small bond builds between Beckett and Miller and there's a couple of decent scenes of Miller training his new sniper protege.

I guess I should mention the eye-candy of the piece, newcomer Annabel Wright as Lieutenant Ellen Abramowitz. Her inclusion is pretty limited and it feels as if the producers hired her then worked out what to do with her afterwards. There's a brief, restrained sex scene where you don't get to see much of anything and then she's occasionally holding a pistol or wearing an officer's uniform. Not much to the character at all. All the other characters serve their purposes well but they just couldn't give her a decent part.

I really enjoyed Sniper: Reloaded overall. The acting was good accross the board, the action was quality and asside from a few boring moments in the middle - mainly during the forced attempt at building a relationship between Beckett and Abramowitz - it moves at a swift pace with a few good twists and turns. The ending sets it up for a fifth movie in the franchise too, and if the quality is at least as good as Reloaded I say bring it on.

The Video:

Typically gorgeous anamorphic widescreen print with explosive surround sound that we've come to expect from modern action films. The african landscapes pop on the screen and the night-time scenes are not crushed into blackness. Runtime 91 minutes.

Sourced From:

Region 1 disc from eBay for about $10.

Trailer:

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