With two misses in the war genre with Korean War movie I DIE ALONE and the WWII set NEAR ENEMIES, director Michael Fredianelli finally hits the mark with his Vietnam War movie EASY TARGETS. The film opens in medias res during a bloody action scene full of pyrotechnics, slow motion, bloody squibs, and rapid cross cut editing highly reminiscent of Sam Peckinpah's 1977 war film CROSS OF IRON. The movie gets it right starting off with a bang and gives you your monies worth almost immediately. What follows fares about as good as the viewer is brought along on a mission with a sniper and a spotter behind enemy lines during the late stages of US involvement in the Vietnam War. A game of cat and mouse ensues with a Viet Cong Sniper known as the VC Viper and the tension does not let up.
For an independent film with a low budget, you have to be impressed with how much bang Fredianelli gets for his buck filming a Vietnam movie in California. The locations more often than not pass well enough to sell the illusion and there's even a shot of farmland that's damn near mistakable for a Vietnamese rice paddy. The Viet Cong's costuming and weaponry could have been a bit better given the film's version of the communist fighting arm doesn't resemble the historical Viet Cong too well. Their costuming rings far too sophisticated for the ragtag guerrilla fighters with modern cargo pants and boots when sandals and more traditional Vietnamese garb would have been appropriate. And while the armament selections aren't bad (The Viet Cong got their hands on almost every weapon type of then recent vintage they could get), it's a little odd to see only one or two of the infamous AK-47 assault rifles being fielded by the guerrilla force in the war's latter stage in 1973. At best, a good chunk of the Viet Cong soldiers in this movie look like the mercenaries you'd see in a 1980s Southeast Asia set Hong Kong action figure and that's not necessarily a bad thing if you're into that sort of thing and have nostalgia for those movies.
Acting wise, Carlos Flores Jr. Does a great job headlining the film as the calm, collected, and highly dedicated sniper. He's a joy to watch as he shows his newfound spotter the ropes and employs many tricks of the trade to dispatch Viet Cong sentries and track the Notorious VC Viper. Liam Sharpe is a little less effective playing the shell shocked spotter and comes off as maybe slightly over the top as the cliché "headcase." His double dose of PTSD and religious zealotry surely had to make him one of the more challenging roles to get right from an acting standpoint. On the opposing front, the Viet Cong has less to do, but we manage to get some great moments with stoic Michael Catura who comes off as a more than adequate threat to our lead American sniper. In particular, there's a great training montage sequence featuring the character accompanied by a Vietnamese acid rock soundtrack that is fun to watch and really sets the pace for the rivalry between opposing snipers and their ultimate face-off. Boynton Paek and Thomas Nguyen are memorable showing up as minor Viet Cong sentries and add authenticity bringing actual Vietnamese dialog to the movie's proceedings. While it can be assumed that Nguyen is a native speaker, Korean-American actor American Paek (who previously delivered lines in Japanese for director Fredianelli's NEAR ENEMIES) proves a knack for dialect and linguistics performing what sounds like an authentic Vietnamese accent (this reviewer has visited Vietnam and the language has a very specific and difficult to imitate cadence that Paek nails here).
All in all, EASY TARGETS is a solid low budget war movie that keeps you thrilled from start to finish. While it explores some similar themes to Fredianelli's earlier film NEAR ENEMIES, it does so far more effectively and remains the director's best stab at the war genre so far.
