Sniper: Forze speciali

I've never knowingly watched a Steven Seagal movie before and I came into this one 5-10 mins after the start on late-night TV, so I didn't recognize him in the dark glasses and - as somebody else has pointed out here - expanded waistline. I quickly became mesmerized by it, simply because I couldn't believe that anybody really makes movies this bad any more. I thought I must be tripping.

For a start off, as we all know, according to that Paul Hardcastle song, the average age of the combat soldier in Vietnam was 19. According to Sniper: Special Ops, the average age of the combat soldier in Afghanistan appears to be about 59. The commanding officer in particular, played by actor Dale Dye who is in his 70s, looked monstrously miscast.

Then the guy in the dark glasses - presumably the sniper of the title and as I later discovered, played by Seagal - has to get up and get some water. He's behind enemy lines, there are potential snipers behind every wall, IUDs etc, and yes, I know he's hard and frightened of nothing, but wouldn't he have displayed just a little caution in walking around, instead of looking like he's strolling down to the neighborhood 7-11? I found myself yelling at the TV "you're an actor! Why don't you ACT?" Then I found out it was that famous and popular actor with the dozens of movies to his name, Steven Seagal. Wow.

That's 84 minutes of my life I will never get back. Though I must admit I did get a bit of a giggle out of it.

Segal and a gang of old hairy special ops get caught in Taliban fight an dfight and fight and then report to a colonel old enough to have fought at gettysburg! And a girl with baby who is daughter of Taliban cheif and more fighting and more moe fighting and Seagal mumbles hi sway through it all and men are dying left and right and up and down and... Oh dear this really is a boring film. I stayed watching to end because my neighbours had a party and I couldn't go to bed.

Overall plot could have been interesting but direction and casting was incredibly poor. Main actors were decades too old and obviously overweight and out of condition to be remotely believable as active duty soldiers let alone the top-shelf special forces they were portraying.

Soldier ranks and chain of command was completely wrong for the situation and even the most obvious military tactics such as securing a perimeter, finding cover/laying prone during a firefight or trying to avoid an obvious ambush were mostly ignored.

Character development was nil and supporting women only served to annoy the main characters without a hint of romantic interest or sex appeal which might have at least distracted viewers from an overall lackluster film. The audience was given little reason to care who won or lost and there was no interesting subplot, character drama or anything all that interesting to see in terms of actors, vehicles, aircraft or weapons.

In spite of the cast including 7th Dan Aikido black belt Steven Seagal and WWE pro wrestler Rob Van Dam there is never a single physical altercation, only a series of lackluster gunfights.

Some smaller problems the US weapons were obviously not government issue: barrel lengths, flash hiders, sights were all wrong as was the lack of typical support weapons on both sides.

Weapons usage was strange even for b-movies, most rifles were never fired full-auto, characters seemed to have ample ammo but most fired sparingly while the "sniper" was spraying everything in sight with full-auto fire. Later no one remembered to reload a nearly empty M9 pistol before starting a new gunfight...the same M9 pistol which proved far more accurate and deadly than any of the scoped M4 assault rifles the soldiers were firing.

Tim Abell showed some great acting skills and was a likable character as Sgt Mosby but unfortunately he was still far too old and out of shape to pull off the role.

I like alot of Seagal DTV flicks & consider some of them "Gems" like his Driven to Kill,Pistol Whipped,A Dangerous Man & Belly of the Beast. Unfortunately as we all know, with some decent one's we also get the absolute Trash ones like: Attack Force,A Good Man,Shadow Man,Black Dawn & Sniper.

We all know Seagal isn't a good actor but we watch him for the old school brutal vigilante Justice he does to the scum of the world, that's his appeal as we grew up watching him & just enjoy watching his beat the crap outta bad guys. Here in this pile of poop, Seagal is a boring Sniper that sits around & it's just a weird & boring Iraq based war drama. Weird that Seagal was in this & even weirder that he produced it? Like i said i do enjoy alot of Seagal's DTV output but this one was boring & Seagal was a side character & i turned it off halfway through. Just a crappy one of his huge output

Yet another in a long succession of horrible straight-to-video movies by Seagal of late. At least there were no CGI bullet holes in this one. What I don't understand is why producers can't hire a decent military consultant when shooting a war movie. Jeff Bosley (Doc) is a Green Beret, how he didn't die laughing during the filming is beyond me. Firearm handling is absolutely ridiculous, Rob Van Dam clearly has never fired a long gun before in his life. Charlene Amoia, who claims to be an "expert marksman" holds a pistol like it's a personal massager (wink-wink).

You see an assortment of optics on the team's rifles (ACOG, Aimpoint, Eotech) but the funniest is a tiny RDS on Segal's rifle that has superimposed hash marks when looking through it in Seagal's first- person view. Absurd.

Overall, horrible low-budget B-flick with bad story, horrible acting and a huge number of blunders. Save yourself some time and DO NOT watch it.