The Sniper (2009)

Two policemen found a car stranded by the roadside and they received a message from their radio transmitter on a runaway car which is right in from of their eyes. Soon, they found the criminals hideout and caught in the middle of the shootout. One of the policemen OJ (Edison Chen), who manages to stay calm and double kill the criminals. Special Duties Unit (SDU) who was present is Hartman Fong (Richie Ren) sees his potential and recruited him.At the academy, OJ spoke to Shane (Bowie Lam) about the best sniper and he sees Lincoln's name in the academy board but he is nowhere to be found. Shane explains that Lincoln has been expelled from the academy due to an incident.A couple of days later, Lincoln Ching (Huang Xiaoming) has been released from prison after four years and is greeted by fellow officer and friend, Shane, who treats him to some dinner and sending him home. When Lincoln returns to his apartment, he stares at the aquarium and his wife, Crystal (Mango Wong) appears and they are reunited again.In a flashback, Hartman succeeds Shane as the new leader of Hong Kong's Special Duties Unit Sniper Team. The best sniper was Hartman's former teammate Lincoln, whose unorthodox methods and confidence makes him arrogant and disdainful of authority. Hartman and Lincoln are two alpha males with a long-running rivalry, with only room at the top for one sharpshooter.One night, an incident at a bank robbery goes wrong when crime boss Tao (Jack Kao) was holding the son of bank chairman as hostage, Lincoln saw an opportunity for headshot because he wants to rescue everyone when he witness Tao has pulled out the grenade pin in his hand. Lincoln was testified but no one else on the Sniper Team support his story, indeed there is a feeling that Hartman (who was the only other person who could have been in a position to see Tao with the grenade).Within days Lincoln has purchased an illegal sniper rifle. Lincoln helps crime boss Tao escape prisoner transfer convoy. An off-duty Hartman witnessed the incident, killing several of Tao's men but unable to prevent them from breaking their boss free. OJ, the hot-headed rookie on the team, surprises everyone by accurately replicating the suspect's impossible shots. He manages to do this because of advice from Lincoln when they were at a bar.As Hartman investigates the suspect, he inadvertently runs into crime boss Tao and his henchmen in the elevator of an apartment building. Hartman manages to kill one of the criminals but while chasing after Tao, he is covered by Lincoln. Hartman pursues Lincoln to the roof and Lincoln loses his grip on a rope and falls down. Tao escapes but his right-hand man is cornered by police, so he flees into a restaurant and takes hostages.Hartman coordinates his sniper team but only OJ has a good shot. Although Hartman's order is "shoot to kill", OJ instead wounds the criminal in the arm holding the gun. Although the hostage situation has been resolved without loss of innocent life, Hartman and OJ have a heated argument over his given order.Lincoln survived the fall with no major injuries and continues his plan of revenge and kidnaps Shane, who is Lincoln's last friend and supporter from the SDU. While Lincoln and Crystal make conversation, Shane regains consciousness and reminds him that Crystal is dead and it is revealed that Lincoln has been hallucinating all this time. In a fit of rage, Lincoln takes his rifle and fires at the ghosts of Hartman and the bank chairman's son, before realizing that he has unintentionally killed Shane.A flashback shows Crystal visiting Lincoln in prison, but he tells he to go away. Crystal then returns home and drops the wedding ring into the aquarium. Standing out on the balcony of her apartment looking at a photo of them in happier times, a wind blows away the photo, and as she lunges for it she tumbles over the railing and falls to her death.In the end, Lincoln decides to lure Hartman and the SDU sniper team into a trap at a auto scrap warehouse, leading to the ultimate showdown amongst three expert snipers. First, Lincoln forces the crime boss Tao reenact the bank robbery hostage taking, and unlike four years ago, this time Lincoln successfully kills Tao and saves the hostage. In the final gun battle, most of Hartman's team is wounded or killed, and Hartman volunteers to sacrifice himself and draw Lincoln's attention, allowing OJ to kill Lincoln and become the best sniper in the SDU.--The Sniper revolves around with a rookie cop turn professional sniper in the Special Duties Unite (SDU) and recently released from prison, an ex- sniper seeks revenge against his former squad because no one support his testimonial when he fires the shot at crime boss Tao, when he really saw him releasing the grenade pin.Nothing much about it. It's just exciting to see their breathing precision in while sniping with accuracy.

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.

Tagline: More like a video game than an actual movie… Review by Neo: For whatever reason, The Sniper does not seem like a movie, but rather like a kid playing the latest shooting video game. The effect certainly oozed everything that is cool and nothing else. Maybe it is because of the producer cutting and chopping every possible scenes of the notorious Edison Chen, The Sniper just never seems to care about the characters or the story for that matter. The film is ultimately uneven, makes next to no sense and rather like a mindless action flick, with zero substance.The movie is basically about sniper cops fighting criminals. Richie Ren is a top sniper cop and somehow recruits Edison Chen after witnessing his snipe-ring abilities. Huang Xiaoming used to be the very best sniper cop, but after an accidental killing in an hostage situation, Huang is jailed and subsequently dismissed from the force. As with all routine and cliché movies goes, Huang ends up moving on to the dark side and help the criminals to hunt down sniper cops...Not a clever or intriguing story, especially one would expect more from the director of Beast Cops and Beast Stalker. Usually, it is safe to say that Dante Lam likes to focus on characters and a look at Anthony Wong, award winning display in Beast Cops and Nick Cheung in Beast Stalker, already provides adequate evidence. Here, director Lam forgets the need of a story, partly due to the relentless cutting of most of Edison's scenes. Unfortunately, the movie suffers and by the final showdown, there is no character for the audience to care about and no emotions to be felt by the awaiting audience.Firstly the performance of Edison Chen is quite frankly uninteresting, bland and quite crap. It is perhaps a blessing in disguise for the cinema of Hong Kong to lose such a talentless actor. It goes without saying that Edison can't act and despite having praised his abilities to play a dog in Dog Bite Dog, there is no doubt within my mind that Edison still cannot act and thinks he is cool, when obviously he is not. Maybe, he can play another dog or mentally disturbed character, if he wants to prove me wrong. While cutting his scenes, makes the film uneven or even raising questions of making no senses, at the end of the day, the film is far better without Edison, than with it. So my advice to him, is stay away from Hong Kong for the better.Moving on to Richie Ren, it's been a while since Richie last made a decent movie with a decent enough role. Richie is a decent actor with decent presence, but it's been 3 yrs since Johnnie To's Exiled and to see him go further and further away from reaching his potential in useless flicks like Contract Lover and The Sniper, it is just frustrating. Sure, he has enough presence to carry the flick, but career-wise, Richie isn't heading the correct direction. As for Huang Xiao-Ming, his overacting is more frustrating to endure and quite frankly, his villainous turn fails to convince. The much missed Mango Wong (last seen at the cinemas with Ghost Office/ Conman 2002), is a welcome addition and instill some sparks in an otherwise rather dull flick with even duller characters.All in all, The Sniper is simply a critical failure and a commercial failure. Whatever, Dante Lam's intention is, it will probably remain unclear. Maybe he turned into his Heat Team (2004) mode, but even that was funny and cool at the same time. Maybe he turned his head back in place, after this and churned out Beast Stalker. Needless to say, the sniper shooting is cool to watch, Richie Ren is cool dude and so is Huang Xiao Ming to a degree and of course, Edison is just plain crap. The main thing is that this is a movie, but it never seems to run like one. Like the failure of mindless action flicks in Hollywood, for example, Ballistic - Ecks vs. Sever. While The Sniper never seem to reach that height of disappointment, but when you are aiming for a target as low as this, the only loser that comes out of this is ultimately the paying public. For the last time, and hopefully will be, the film is a cool and bad, but nothing can be worst than Edison, himself … (Neo 2009) I rate it 3/10www.thehkneo.com

Chinese action film isn't quite as good as the start promises, but it still a good way to spend time in the dark. The plot has a young cop recruited by the Hong Kong Police for their sniper corps after remaining cool under fire in the films opening set piece. From there the plot spins out as the young turk is trained, chafes at the by the book methods and flirts briefly with the dark side, in the form of an ex-sniper who wants revenge on the sniper corps. The action scenes are well done (especially considering there is only so much you can do with sniper rifles) and are the sort of thing that you really wouldn't mind seeing again (because you'd be surprised what you can do with sniper rifles). When the film is on it really works well. The problem is that the stuff away from the action or training sequences aren't as good as the rest of the film. Part of the problem is that there seems to be too many little side bits going on for an 85 minute movie. Things seem to be brought up and then are done away with and characters seem to come and go. Of course this being an action movie thats not why you're watching the film, however it would have been nice if the non-shooting bits hung together better so they film had more weight and didn't seem do breezy. Action film fans of all stripes will want to take a look.