Review for The Sniper

Introduction

I remember seeing somewhere, or perhaps reading somewhere that of all the combatants in war, the sniper least wants to be captured by the enemy. That's an understandable sentiment when you consider that the average soldier isn't necessarily fighting to kill, he usually fighting to protect, fighting to stay alive, and his actions will be measured in the heat of the moment, the chaos and mayhem of battle. The sniper on the other hand sits off to one side of the battlefield, his role is to find and target enemy combatants, and pick them off one at a time, from a distance, methodically and without mercy. He has the power of death at his fingertips, and he's as close to a cold-blooded killer as you can get on the battlefield.


With that in mind, you wouldn't expect a lot of mercy to be shown to a sniper. On the other hand, studying what goes into the character of a sniper invites a lot of interest, and a film pitting two snipers against each other would elevate war to something of a chess game, an exercise more mental than emotional. With a film called The Sniper, you'd be forgiven for expecting the distillation of such precepts onto celluloid. You'd be wrong to do so, as the forthcoming Dante Lam movie from Chelsea Films is nothing of the sort.


It could have been a disaster when two uniformed cops blundered into a stakeout and interrupted a gang of hardened criminals. But the coolness under pressure and ability to make quick decisions marked OJ out as a potential recruit for the police's sniper unit. Its leader Hartman spots much potential in OJ, and takes him under his wing, but the sniper unit has a history which is going to come back to haunt it.


It's been four years since ace police sniper Lincoln was put behind bars for manslaughter, after he killed a hostage by mistake in a standoff at a bank. Now that he's been released, he's looking for revenge against all who conspired to put him in prison, and top of his list is his former colleague and rival Hartman. New recruit OJ will be caught right in the middle of the vendetta between these two men, as Lincoln's bloody vengeance unfolds.

The Disc

The Sniper gets a simple animated menu screen, where the only extra is the film's trailer.

The image is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, and is clear and sharp throughout, with consistent colours, strong detail, and no compression problems to worry about. It's a very acceptable presentation of a recent film. Similarly, the audio options of DD 5.1 and DD 2.0 Cantonese offer no issues to complain about. The surround audio does its job in giving the film presence, and making sure the action sequences have sufficient weight and impact to them. The only annoyance was the subtitle font, which is a thick white. The thickness causes exclamation marks to blur into little letter 'l' shapes, which gives the impression that the subtitles are teeming with typos.

Conclusion

Check your brain at the door, as you won't need it for this thin and inconsequential action movie. The Sniper is a case of all the effort going into the eye-candy, and sparing none for the story, the script or the acting. It's also a prime example of the fact that you can have all the coolest editing techniques and camera angles in your repertoire, you can come up with all the finest action sequences that you can possibly choreograph, but if you don't have the story, the script, or the acting, then you still won't have an entertaining movie. For all the eye-candy and impact of The Sniper, I just couldn't engage with it.


There isn't even that much of a story to get wrong, as it's a simple tale of revenge, with a former police sniper who feels he was unfairly prosecuted, looking to avenge himself on those he blames for hanging him out to dry. In the centre of all this is the rivalry between him and the current head of the sniper unit, boiled down to their respective approaches to their jobs. Lincoln is quick, and takes chances, while Hartman is methodical and careful. Into the middle of this comes rookie OJ, initially mentored by Hartman, but when he learns of Lincoln, he takes an interest in his approach as well. It's not much of a story to get wrong, but The Sniper manages it regardless.


For one thing, it's short at just 83 PAL minutes. The other thing is that it's shot like a pop music video, lots of short cuts, randomly edited together, lacking a narrative flow, and failing to build up any suspense or tension. It spends its time looking cool, rather than offering any exposition, and rather than taking an interest in piecing the wafer thin story together myself, it was far easier just to ignore it. It's also full of dead ends and apparently meaningless characters. Hartman's ex-wife tries to kill herself. Why she does this, we never find out. What her relationship with her husband is to make her resent him so is never explained. We meet OJ's father, an obnoxious, down on his luck gambler who resents his policeman son. But the character has no bearing on the story, and there's no explanation to his brief appearance. There are so many such narrative non sequiturs that by the time a few did actually pan out, I was long past caring.


With all this nonsense, and with the random pop video editing style, there's very little time to actually develop the characters, and in a film about the conflict between two snipers, that's a fatal flaw. The Sniper is pure style and no substance. It's the textbook definition of 'kewl'.