Sniper: Ghost Shooter

Sniper was a good action film. It moved along at a decent pace, played the tension between old hand and up-and-coming newbie well and threw in a fair amount of tension.

In accordance with the law of diminishing returns, this one barely registers. Sure, if you like mindless running around "having a gunfight" every 20 minutes with people taking impossible shots and dying in "throw your arms and legs out" style you'll probably enjoy it.

If you're looking for a half decent plot, characters who are bit more than 2 dimensions and a "twist" that doesn't telegraph its arrival in neon lights then look elsewhere.

I happened to stumble upon the 2016 movie "Sniper: Ghost Shooter" by random chance here in 2023. And seeing Billy Zane returning again to the "Sniper" franchise, of course I opted to sit down and watch what director Don Michael Paul had to offer.

As for the storyline and script in "Sniper: Ghost Shooter", then writers Michael Frost Beckner, Crash Leyland and Chris Hauty put together an enjoyable and entertaining enough script. It wasn't the best of storylines in the "Sniper" franchise, but it was enjoyable for what it turned out to be; that being a rather action-packed storyline. There wasn't any twists or plot surprises for the 99 minutes that the movie ran for, which made it a fairly predictable and a bit generic storyline, actually.

The acting performances in the movie were good, and it definitely was nice to see Billy Zane return to reprise the role of Richard Miller again. The movie also had some other familiar faces on the cast list, with the likes of Chad Michael Collins and Dennis Haysbert. All in all, I will say that the entire cast ensemble in the movie put on good performances to bring both the storyline and the characters to life on the screen.

There is actually a good amount of action throughout the course of the movie, to the extend where it starts to feel like a war movie, given all the skirmishes that the snipers were in, fighting against adversaries with fully automatic weapons and rocket launchers. It was a shame that the writers opted for this approach, as it became more of an action-oriented movie, instead of the lie-in-wait-and-wait-for-the-shot movie that the 1993 first movie "Sniper" in the franchise was. Sure, the action was good, and the movie was certainly entertaining enough for what it was. Just don't go about expecting an archetypical sniper type of movie.

My rating of "Sniper: Ghost Shooter", from director Don Michael Paul, lands on a five out of ten stars.

A fair supporting cast doing a mediocre job for a very stiff main carachter.

The" love" interest angle was awful as it didn't make sense as does part of the plot but you realize the reason for the 1st half while watching the rest of it. It was just poorly planned, or written and directed. It fought itself.

The movie only comes together during the 2nd half, if you get that far, as technically the gunplay doesn't make sense either, that is if you have any military or police experience, so make sure to turn off your brain (or have a very strong alcoholic beverage so you don't care.) Remember to turn on the 'closed caption' at the beginning otherwise you won't get any of the dialog as the loud ethnic music drowns out the speaking parts and you spend most of the movie thinking 'wtf did he just say?' Oh, and the main carachter speaks with clenched teeth which doesn't help his dialog and it comes off forced and uncharismatic, instead of tough. Haysbert and Zane, and the foreign counterpart assigned to the team are what hold the film together but I couldn't refrain from thinking throughout the whole thing that I could have been watching reruns of "the unit" and had a better time.

I watched this on a bootleg site that was all written in Arabic. The copy of the DVD had Arabic subtitles. I couldn't help wondering how that audience receives a movie like this, let alone do they enjoy watching it? Maybe they don't care, they just pirate the movies and make their money.

Anyway, I've been out of the "Sniper" loop since about the second one (What are we on now? 12?) so I needed to do a little catching up. I have to say that this wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Sure the visual fx were pretty cheesy and the dialog was, at times, embarrassing. But over all it far surpassed anything Steven Seagal has done in the last decade or so (with the possible exception of The Cockpuncher) So, in doing a little research I discovered that just about anyone associated with these films is either trying to get a career started or pretending their career isn't yet over.

There was, in fact some decent acting. You can tell a good actor when he delivers the cheesiest line in a way that almost makes you believe him (or her)

But the one overlying factor was that whenever Dennis Haysbert was on screen I kept expecting him to say, "That's Allstate's stand. Are you in good hands?"

So, i was disappointed that they didn't say how the enemy got the equipment.. was kind of expecting that. Like if that was the main thing holding up the story you think they would talk about how the breach happened and what they did to fix it.

Also this requires a minimum amount of characters in order to leave a review, so allow me to use the rest of the space as a fill-in. Thank you for taking the time to read my review, and I hope it finds you in good spirits. This movie was good but overall I would not watch it again as pieces of the plot could have been addressed better. But the actors did well.