Sniper: Assassin's End

'Assassin's End' once again brings the estranged father and son team together, but it's tired. By no means the worst of the series, it still rocks a one note conspiracy storyline. So you get bursts of action as the #1 priority becomes the cliche "get to the bottom of things, find out who's responsible" yarn.

A high-profile trade agreement and the foreign face gets assassinated. Brandon Beckett (Chad Michael Collins) is set up, evidence is planted and on the run he goes. Trying to avoid CIA agents who think he's responsible and an assortment of mercs trying to close off the loose end. A Yukuza hitman / sniper is also dispatched to finish him as well. So he turns to the only person he can trust - his dad.

'Assassin's End' introduced Lady Death (Sayaka Akimoto) & Homeland Security Agent Zero (Ryan Robbins) who would be featured in the next two sequels. Unlike other entries in the series that have good replay value, I won't be rewatching this any time soon. Another appearance from legendary Thomas Beckett (Tom Berenger) can't save this one from being kind of a bore as it goes thru the motions on the way to a unsatisfying finale.

This film was pretty good. I've only seen one other movie in the franchise so far. But from what I've seen they are also pretty entertaining. The character of yuki introduced here I liked very much and feel she could have her own spin off in the future. Aside from this the main two actors were good as always and altogether if your a fan of the series or just like action films in general then you are going to like this one.

The "Sniper" franchise is a known commodity now, and although "Sniper: Assassin's End" is a step down from "Sniper: Ultimate Kill" and the others that have come before it, right back to the Billy Zane original, Chad Michael Collins' fifth outing as Brandon Beckett has some good action sequences both with and without rifles and is a chance for Brandon to team up with his somewhat-estranged old man, Thomas Beckett (Tom Berenger) and do what they do best.

At times, the Beckett's were secondary to the characters of Special Agent Zeke "Zero" Rosenberg and the mysterious assassin Doctor Death - as though the powers-that-be were using "Assassin's End" as a backdoor spin-off. They were both good characters, but give me more of the Beckett's, please!

Enjoyable, nonetheless.

For a while I thought I'd been transported back to the 80's.

With a decent story poorly executed, weak direction, cheesy script and atrocious soundtrack this was the sort of thing you hired from blockbuster for 99p for a week.

Mildly entertaining, straight to VHS fodder.

Directing by Kaare Andrews was adequate - for a B-grade film, but camera shots during the action scenes weren't good. Directing his cast was also an issue - his inexperience apparent. The writing by newb Oliver Thompson was terrible, even for an amateur. Lame cliched dialogue, dumbed down extended scenes, with plot and technical issues. Had this been edited properly - trimmed/cut out around 10-15 min off the poorly paced 90 min runtime, most of the writing issues wouldn't be as apparent. So not entirely Thompson's fault for the final product. The score was actually fitting and not as overbearing and loud you'd expect in a B-grade film. Although we've seen many films like this, for a B-grade film put together by inexperienced filmmakers, this one held my attention and was enjoyable for the most part - especially the first third of the film. It's a very generous 6/10 from me.