The most strange thing about the continuing adventures of Tom Berenger’s legendarily miserable, nine-fingered sniper is that he has continuing adventures in the first place. Even in the anything-goes world of the DTV sequel, the fact that we had a military set franchise that was being fronted by a man circling 55 years old was an incredibly odd thing to occur in 2004 when a lot of other, similar series were understandily more youth orientated. Still, one thing that’s been on the side of the Sniper movies is that for all their quirks, and a noticable ability to avoid a big screen release with all the skill of a stealthy assassin avoiding detection, they’ve actually been fairly solid, if disposable, entries.
However, with the third entry, there is definitely a sense that Berenger’s grouchy sharpshooter has reached the end of the line as this trilogy capper starts to address his advancing years just as much as it delves into his past. However, while it looked like both Berenger and his franchise are locking in its final bullet, no one realised that the franchise would eventually gain an unlimited ammo cheat that seemingly has no end.
After the events of the previous film, we find sourpuss marksman Thomas Beckett struggling to adjust after getting reinstated back as a U.S. Marine as he’s unable to give a shit about the chain of the command as he spent most of his military career alone in some godforsaken jungle making up his own orders. What’s worse, the severed finger he obtained has caused nerve damage that’s steadily getting worse and that could lead to him jerking a trigger at entirely the wrong moment and the final revelation in this hat trick of depression is that the son of an old, dead, Vietnam buddy is getting married and Beckett’s presence just stirs up some bad memories.
Of course, whenever Beckett seems to be at his lowest, you can count on the military brass to swoop in and require him for a typically harrowing mission, but after being urged by CIA Director William Avery to go back to his old Vietnam stomping grounds to pop a prominent weapons and drug trafficker known as “King Cobra”. So far, so standard, however the match is that King Cobra is actually his Vietnam buddy, Paul Finnegan, whose death seemingly was greatly exaggerated after being recruited to run drugs to fund CIA operations. His obvious decent into insanity now a hinderence to another former war buddy who currently has presidential aspirations, Beckett has to now track down the man who once saved his life and turn his skull into the approximate shape of a fleshy doughnut.
Teamed with NSA-recruited Vietnamese police officer Quan, Beckett goes to Ho Chi Minh City to take out his former friend, but soon he discovers that there are double crosses afoot as he struggles to accept the mission and his own physical ability to get the job done.
I have to say, even if the Sniper franchise hasn’t exactly placed a smoking bullet hole dead centre in the forehead of classic action cinema, the entire franchise thus far has proved to be dependably solid fare. Pairing up an incredibly disgruntled looking Tom Berenger with various, younger teammates while gradually tasking him to headshot various bastards around the globe may not be the most imaginative template the series could have chosen, but it’s worked fairly well up until now. Well, it’s no big surprise to discover that Sniper 3 follows suit by being yet another DTV release that manages to cling onto the ranking of watchable due to Berenger’s glaring power and a couple of nicely competent action sequences. Of course, the series seems to be gradually edging out of its military era and slowing creeping into the realms of a standard actioner, but while the off-used tension of having Beckett try and make a difficult shot are often interrupted by bouts of duel handed gunplay, the plot also remembers to include a fair amount of sniper-based paranoia that’s helped the franchise differentiate itself since the Billy Zane days.
Also keeping things interesting is the fact that even though Beckett is once again officially working as a marine after pulling some strings after the climax of Sniper 2, his body simply isn’t complying as it should with a degenerative condition brought on by his de-fingering in the first Sniper finally catching up with him and throwing off that legendary aim. With that bombshell, there’s a sense of finality about Sniper 3 that succeeds in raising some of the stakes above their usual levels, but ironically, despite the fact that director P.J. Pesce is obviously pushing for a “final mission” feel, no one was to know that the franchise would suddenly resurrect in 2011 and stubbornly keep going until the present day.
Still, the callbacks to Beckett’s past in Vietnam and the reveal that his friend has gone nuts and become an insanely powerful drug lord/arms dealer creates a fitting amount of personal shit to make the mission feel extra personal as our scowling hero confront his past in the exact place that chewed up so many American soldiers in the past.
However, despite a decent setup, you can tell that maybe some of the producers didn’t have the attention span to make yet another movie featuring Berenger lying for prolonged periods of time, directing death stares down the sights of a meticulously balanced scope, and some of the action starts to veer into rather broad territory. Some of us may recognise Byron Mann as Ryu from that abortive attempt of a Street Fighter video game movie back in 94, but here the filmmakers frequently have him pull out two guns and shoot up the place while sliding along the floor like he’s in a John Woo movie. It’s cool to watch, but it’s a weird thing to do when you’re supposed to be building tension as Beckett struggles to line up a shot while his tortured conscience and his gammy nerves threaten to betray him. There’s also a sense that the movie is itching to delve into its dark shadow-politics with Beckett having to deal with a double cross from his own superiors, Quan being a plant in the Vietnamese police from the NSA and Finnegan getting his new career start as a drug runner from the CIA, but the movie instead only lightly covers these topics while trying to keep the bullets flying for the more attention challenged in the audience.
Still, making the final boss Beckett’s old buddy may be a long standing trope of action movies to make things extra personal organically (even though Beckett just so happens to be a guest of honor at Finnegan’s son’s wedding literally days beforehand), but it works and even when the movie lapses into action movie insanity (Beckett’s climatic shot may be cool, but it also had me involuntarily yelling “oh fuck off” at the screen), it still manages to keep what’s important fully in the sight of it’s crosshairs.
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