The Sniper

This movie was rather enjoyable. Sure, it wasn't a revolutionary movie in the Hong Kong cinema, but it was actually quite entertaining.

Writers Wai Lun Ng and Dante Lam managed to put together a storyline and script that proved entertaining from start to end. Sure, the movie was crammed with cliché characters, but it actually worked out well enough, given the concept of the story.

"San Cheung Sau" (aka "The Sniper") is an action- and adrenaline-driven crime thriller with an adequately written storyline that was predictable and generic at times, but was helped along nicely by the action. It should be said that while director Dante Lam is good at taking the audience from A to B throughout the movie, then there isn't room for surprises and twists to the storyline, so it was a somewhat predictable storyline.

The cast ensemble for the movie was good and there are some familiar faces on the cast list, if you are familiar with Hong Kong cinema. Edison Chen (playing OJ) and Richie Jen (playing Hartman) are in the leading roles, but the movie was actually carried mostly by Xiaoming Huang (playing Lincoln).

There is a good amount of action and shooting in the movie, and that is definitely something that gives the movie an injection and keeps it from falling into a slump.

My rating of "San Cheung Sau" lands on a six out of ten stars.

Good HK action film about HK police snipers.

The story is about a new recruit into HK police sniper team. He has a mentor that teaches him the ropes of the trade. In the mean time, an ex-sniper from his squad has gone rogue and killing his members. The new recruit must take on the challenge, and hunt down his ex colleague.

This is a quality movie that is entertaining. The mood, the suspense, all adds to the story. Location scenes are also great in this movie. It's adds fresh perspective to Hong Kong movies. It's also one of Edison Chen's best performances.

The movie has cool looks, good action, and good acting. It's also one of a kind movie that's about snipers in Hong King, and was a good movie to watch.

7.5/10

(2009) The Sniper (In Chinese with English subtitles) PSYCHOLOGICAL ACTION THRILLER

Co-written and directed by Dante Lam that motivates OJ (Edison Chen) motivated to be involve into being a sharpshooter from just being a regular police officer. And as a result of a misunderstanding of a particular task,turned one of the best sharp shooters to turn against his own officers. OJ figures his mentor, Lincoln (Xiaoming Huang) is seeking retribution for the way police and the entire police academy had dissed him.

As a fan of action movies, I did not think there was very much of it for there was more tension a little suspense than anything. The backstory was dumb whereas the police are not going to just ignore any former sharper shooter who used to work for the police force, there clearly would be an APB on him since he himself appear to be way more dangerous than the crime boss he had helped freed.

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.

I'm an avid fan of HK action in general. There are many great HK action movies. And even after John Woo went Hollywood (although he went back, his recent movie being Red Cliff, which was produced in Asia) there was someone (Johnnie To) who filled in his shoes. And he did a great job in doing so.

But this is a completely different "beast" we get here. This is obviously very "Hollywood"-style, very fast and unfortunately not very good. It has some good action scenes and the intentions of it's filmmaker is noble, but unfortunately it takes too long to get to places, which makes it drag a little. Not bad by any means, but not really what you could/would expect from a good HK Action movie either.