Movie Review – Sniper (1993)
Principal Cast : Tom Berenger, Billy Zane, JT Walsh, Aden Young, Ken Radley, Reynaldo Arenas, Don Battee, Loury Cortez, Gary Swanson, Hank Garrett, Rex Linn, Frederick Miragliotta, Vanessa Steele, Carlos Alvarez, Tyler Coppin, Teo Gilbert, Edward Wiley.
Synopsis: A veteran US Marine sniper is partnered with a rookie sniper as his spotter to take out a politician and a rebel leader in the jungles of Panama.
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Fuelled by dull-witted jingoism and rah-rah bluster, and burdened by an effortful screenplay from Michael Frost Beckner and Crash Leyland, Peruvian director Luis Llosa (Anaconda) takes on the best of the best in American snipers with Sniper—the first of what would become a direct-to-video staple. The film kicks off with a sweat- and rain-soaked adventure into absurdity, delivering hokey action idiocy at its finest. It’s a punctuation mark on ’80s cheese, embracing a Chuck Norris-style “USA! USA!” muscularity while attempting (and failing) to imbue Tom Berenger’s titular assassin with anything resembling meaningful character development. It holds up poorly, though one can see why it became a minor cult classic of the genre and inexplicably spawned no fewer than ten sequels—including the hilariously over-the-top 2023 instalment, Sniper: G.R.I.T. – Global Response & Intelligence Team, because apparently spelling things out for the audience is one of this franchise’s strongest qualities.
Plot synopsis courtesy of Wikipedia: Experienced Marine sniper Thomas Beckett (Tom Berenger) is tasked with eliminating a high-profile target in the dense jungles of Panama. Paired with inexperienced but skilled marksman Richard Miller (Billy Zane), a cocky Special Operations sniper, Beckett must navigate the treacherous terrain, evade hostile forces, and contend with the psychological strain of their deadly mission. As tensions rise between the mismatched partners and their mission spirals into a deadly game of cat and mouse, Beckett’s hardened survival instincts clash with Miller’s inexperience, forcing both men to confront their limits in a brutal fight for survival.
In retrospect, the “sniping” in Sniper is a load of rubbish. At one point, Berenger’s Beckett declares a far-distant target to be “too far away” to shoot, making him either utterly incompetent or completely unqualified for his own job. The trouble with a film where the key element is shooting people from long range is that the principal character is, by necessity, isolated from much of the action—because if you put the sniper too close to his target, he essentially becomes just another marine. This is Sniper‘s fundamental issue, with both leads getting into far more hand-to-hand combat and close-quarters action than they have any right to. The wooden, banal dialogue doesn’t help either, with both Berenger and Zane struggling under the weight of a script that barely musters any dramatic heft. Zane, fresh from his breakout turn in 1989’s Dead Calm, looks awkward and uncomfortable, bouncing between protagonist and antagonist in one of the worst character arcs in modern action cinema. Meanwhile, Berenger sleepwalks through the entire affair, playing Beckett as a man seemingly bored with his own existence. He’s meant to be the hero, but he comes across more like a guy with a death wish—certainly not someone you root for.
Luis Llosa’s direction is perfunctory and stuttering, failing to generate excitement due to an ineffective “sniper POV” effect. A long-lens zoom rounded with a crosshair and bokeh attempts to pull the viewer into the perspective of the shooter, but only serves to highlight the film’s biggest flaw—by all logic, neither Beckett nor Miller should ever be in any real danger, given they should be situated miles from their targets. Yet the film bends over backwards to keep them within the enemy’s line of sight. Maybe sniper rifles in the early ’90s weren’t as good as the ones available today, but for much of the “sniper action,” it feels like Zane and Berenger are sitting right on top of the people they’re meant to be eliminating. Worse still, the dynamic between Beckett and Miller isn’t strong enough to carry the film’s weaker aspects, leaving both leads stranded, forced to mutter inane military jargon and pseudo-intellectual musings on life and death that never elevate the stakes.
The action, such as it is, feels like a cheap carryover from low-rent Chuck Norris flicks like The Delta Force or Missing in Action. Generic camera angles, clumsy editing, and bizarre flashbacks punctuate the narrative with an unremarkable visual style. The Queensland-shot film certainly looks hot and sweaty, but the cinematography is disappointingly flat and lifeless. Generic sound effects for gunfire and bullet strikes strip away any authenticity, while Gary Chang’s score is instantly forgettable—much like the rest of the film. Sniper lacks the urgency or weight to turn its simple premise into anything remotely energised or exciting. The routine ’90s US military bravado and assumption of exceptionalism feel off-putting by today’s standards, and the overt prejudice is often galling to witness. That said, if you enjoy simple-minded action, Sniper might hit the mark. But there’s not much here to genuinely enjoy—unless nihilistic jungle-based murder is your thing. With a protagonist as unlikeable as Beckett front and centre, you’ll be hard-pressed to revisit this one more than once.
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