The Sniper

The Sniper is not going to reinvent the wheel, but it does approach its plot with a certain snazz that you just can't help but smile at. The basic thrust of the film is that a Hong Kong police sniper team have just recruited a new hotshot shooter (Edison Chen) who is shaping up to be just as good as their last top shooter. Turns out, that last guy (Xiaoming Huang) went to prison for head-shotting a hostage during a cluster. Now he's out of prison and decides to go rogue. Uh-oh. Needless to say, the sniper scenes (both the action and training ones) are very cool. The rest? Not so much. One of the good guy snipers has a sub plot about his suicidal wife that goes absolutely nowhere. The villains of the film have nothing to do but serve as devices for the rogue sniper's plot arc. They could have been more important to the story and still have co-existed with Huang's character. Aside from the young hotshot and two other snipers (including Richie Ren as the team leader), the rest of the team remains virtually silent and unknown. They have cool code names like Forest King, Iceman and Rabbit - but no back story or anything memorable about them whatsoever. Again, The Sniper isn't doing anything new, but what it does do is entertaining enough to enjoy it. The English translation of the original title is Godly Gunslingers. How cool is that? Makes a nice double feature with Tom Berenger and Billy Zane's Sniper.