one of my absolute favorites!

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

Hardboiled veteran Marine sniper Tom Beckett (ably played with steely resolve by Tom Berenger) and eager, but inexperienced rookie marksman Richard Miller (a fine performance by Billy Zane) are assigned to pull off a difficult covert mission in which they must venture into the Central American jungle in order to assassinate a powerful rebel leader and his Columbian drug lord backer. Director Luis Llosa brings a commendable mean'n'lean sense of efficiency to the tight and gripping story: The quick pace rarely flags for a minute, the tone is appropriately tough and gritty, the tension builds quite nicely, the dense jungle locations are neatly taken advantage of, and the exciting action set pieces are staged with skill and flair. Moreover, the radical contrast between Beckett's tightlipped no-nonsense machismo and Miller's wide-eyed aiming to please naivete gives this picture extra substance and resonance while the theme on how being a sniper takes a heavy toll on one's soul and conscience provides a surprising amount of poignancy. Best of all, this film has a praiseworthy stripped-down simplicity to it that ensures that there's a refreshing dearth of both cornball humor and needless sappy sentiment. Both Bill Butler's sharp cinematography and Gary Chang's spare moody score are up to speed. An on the money movie.

SNIPER is a surprisingly low budget thriller starring two Hollywood big names, or at least they were once big names back in the day. It's about a US-led mission to take down some rebel generals in Panama, and sees a pair of snipers sent into the jungle to complete the mission. Said actors are Tom Berenger, who would go on to reprise his role in subsequent straight to video sequels, and Billy Zane.Berenger does his straight action man routine well enough and comes across as incredibly macho. Zane has the more interesting role of the inexperienced guy pushed to the edge and does pretty well with it, I think. The main problem the film has is that the staging just isn't all that convincing and the action scenes are routine rather than extraordinary. Australia stands in for Central America well enough, but the chases and shooting scenes never feel all that gripping or suspenseful. For a big budget attempt at a similar subject matter, check out Clint Eastwood's much better American SNIPER.

...to watch. It is terribly slow, uninteresting, uninspiring and filled to the brim with every cliché imaginable. I'm watching it as I write and I'm still hoping for some boobies to show up to let the movie earn the 3 stars I rate it. Did I mention the dialogs are hilarious? I've got Sniper 2 waiting for me, but I guess it'll have to wait a very, very long time, before I willingly and knowingly watch such a horrendously dull movie. Do yourself a favor and watch paint dry, you'll get twice the excitement. There is an attempt at sfx in the movie, this boils down to N times the same.effect: showing the bullet on it's way to the target. O, and there aren't any boobies in this movie, except for booby traps that is.

I watched this movie back in 1993/1994 when it came out, on VHS back then. And I had a very good memory of it! So I watched an uncut version of it lately. And my memory got clearer. I know why I liked it back then (it does criticize a few things in war, human beings and other things) ...... but I also know now, that it's not one of the best anti-war movies ever made! This might be one of the better Tom Berenger roles (with the B-movie "Substitute") and he really is good in this one. Billy Zane delivers a good performance too. But it still leaves you with a feeling that there could've been more ... if maybe a better director were at hand, this could've been considered a classic! One thing is for sure though: One scene is classic and it has to with a bullet and the camera ... if you watch it, you'll know what I mean!