The Sniper (2009)

AKA Sun cheung sau / Godly Gunslingers

Hong Kong

86 mins.

Directed by Dante Lam

Starring: Richie Ren, Edison Chen, Xiaoming Huang

Apparently Edison Chen has been a bad boy. At least that's what I've read.

Regardless, The Sniper is not going to reinvent the wheel; but it does approach its plot with a certain snazz that I couldn't help but smile at. 

The basic thrust of the film is that a Hong Kong police sniper team has just recruited a new hotshot shooter (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 classic standoff/cluster sitch. Now he's out of prison and decides to go rogue. Son of a...

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 subplot about his suicidal wife that goes absolutely nowhere. Chen's character has his own subplot concerning his scummy dad that has a grand total of one scene. Apparently Chen's real life hijinks caused the film to be cut significantly, which may be why there's so many loose ends.

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.

The Sniper isn't doing anything new, but what it does do is just entertaining enough to enjoy it for its short running time. The English translation of the original title is Godly Gunslingers. That's right up there on the awesome title list with Hard Boiled's literal title of God of Guns. Dante Lam probably pulled his fair share of hair out on this shoot, but I wager he'll bounce back nicely. His next movie, Fire of Conscience (For lung), is already getting good buzz.

So, there you go.

lMC