SNIPER (1993) - Movie Review

Director: Luis Llosa
Starring: Tom Berenger, Billy Zane, JT Walsh, Aden Young
Genre: Action, Thriller, War
Writer: Michael Frost Beckner, Crash Leyland
Runtime: 98 min
Rated: Rated R for strong violence and language
Buy This Movie: Blu-ray (Amazon), DVD (Amazon), Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV

This blog is supported by its audience. When you buy through links on my blog, I may earn an affiliate commission.

Synopsis:

Tom Berenger and Billy Zane load their weapons for hair-trigger suspense and through-the-heart action in this non-stop guerrilla adventure exploding with raw firepower. One shot. One kill. No exceptions. By that hard and fast rule, legendary Marine sniper Tom Beckett (Berenger) serves his lonely duty. With a dossier boasting 74 confirmed kills, he may be ready for his final assignment. But is he ready for his toughest? As his spotter, the Pentagon has chosen GS-9 Richard Miller (Zane) a silver-medal marksman aiming for a Washington promotion. Together the bush-savvy gunner and the inexperienced bureaucrat must track down and eliminate a powerful rebel leader and his Columbian drug-lord financier. It's a suicide mission into the jungles of Central America, where a man carries his life in his hands and lives it one bullet at a time.

Review:

I've always meant to watch "Sniper", but never got around to it. What intrigued me was that despite being a modest hit, grossing around $19 million against a $5 million budget, it spawned a batch of nine direct-to-video sequels. And now that I have seen it, I must say it's not bad, but it's not the most amazing action movie ever made, either. Actually, it's more of a suspense thriller that focuses on the nitty-gritty of being a sniper and the psychological toll such work inflicts.

Most of the film follows Tom Berenger and Billy Zane as they infilitrate a Central American jungle (shot in Queensland, Australia), and the details of guerilla warfare are actually quite interesting. It's basically a sniper procedural. Director Luis Llosa ("The Specialist", "Anaconda") doesn't rush the plot, allowing us to spend ample time with these characters more or less in isolation, and that's commendable. However, the downside is that the characters are thinly written, which renders the psychological elements inert. There is a lot of potential here that goes untapped. Regardless, the actors do a solid enough job to keep the viewer invested even when the script doesn't give them better things to do, or say.

Aside from the usual war movie cliches, Llosa actually does a pretty good job setting up the tense sniping sequences. It's all relatively grounded in reality, nothing over-the-top, relying more on the tension of accomplishing the mission stealthily rather than going in guns blazing. No one-man army mowing down baddies in this movie, and I really appreciated that. However, a promising cat-and-mouse game between our two protagonists and a rival sniper is resolved disappointingly quick and anticlimactically. Other than that, all the action scenes are entertaining, skillfully shot and mostly free of complicated visual effects.

The movie also benefits from beautifully photographed locations that help it avoid the generic look of most low-budget action movies, and Llosa employs some inventive bullet POV camerawork that heightens the intensity of the "one shot, one kill" moments. The score by Gary Chang is functional, but forgettable, however keep an ear out for additional music composed by Mark Mancina and Hans Zimmer, mostly in the film's finale.

"Sniper" isn't an original movie, nor is it groundbreaking, but it is a competently made above-average thriller filled with details that fans of military-themed flicks will definitely enjoy.

SCORE: 6.5/10