Blistering performances.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Master Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Beckett is a sniper stationed in Panama. Although skilled, he has lost several men under his command.Beckett is teamed up with a S.W.A.T. member named Miller, who has not earned any confirmed kills, to eliminate a top Panamanian rebel leader.Tensions emerge between the two on how to conduct the mission, coupled with running into numerous challenges during the mission.....If you were like me, a teenager seeing the trailer and that scene where the bullet goes through the scope and kills the opposing Sniper, you had to see this film.Over twenty years on, it's just Billy Zane going all Dead Calm toward the end, and almost giving away their cover every two minutes.Sniper is a film that the title alone would sell to a market. We all love those parts in action films where we see someone getting taken out from a long distance, and when we play Call Of Duty, the sniper parts are the best.But this is where the film fails, it's like watching someone playing a really bland video game, and they are insisting that they watch the in game scenes because they really add something to the film.Brenger is okay, as is Zane, but we've seen this done before a thousand times.And even if that bit with the scope still impresses today, it does not justify a film.Let alone four sequels.

...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.

Best acting rendered by Tom Berenger.Billy Zane,otherwise commendable for dramatic adventure performances in Memphis Belle (1993) and The Phantom (1996),fails to make believable his character's see-sawing,erratic personality (how has he been chosen as a National Security Council operative for a top-ranking killing mission in the Panamanian outback, with only an office background?).The build-up is interesting enough,though the junior marksman played by Zane is deeply fear-stricken to begin with and later on at best irresponsibly indecisive while unbelievably careless,grouchy and childishly arrogant in his goings-on in the jungle,with the murderous streak suddenly developed against his senior partner toward the end of the story seeming very far-fetched,in view of the fact that the baddies are a mere stone's throw away and closing in,so you would not think anyone in that situation would care to consider erasing the only person on his side,not at least until after they had succeeded in escaping and certainly not in the middle of the bullet-ridden mêlée.Berenger looks and acts the part he plays,as a professional military man with all the trappings of a skilled specialist,bare of conceit,plus a moral streak(in jumping to the occasion of wiping out two evildoers rather than just one).The film's unsurprising ending -the junior marksman growing up to become a man- can be discounted by the audience: nothing to remain in the viewer's memory -certainly nothing as Sgt. Croft's unexpected demise towards the end of Raoul Walsh's 1958 film "The Naked and the Dead"-.

Sniper is a much better movie than i thought it would be.i did think it would be entertaining,but more from a time wasting perspective than anything else.but it turns out it's a pretty tense,at times suspenseful film.it's well paced.there are no spots that drag.i wasn't bored for a minute.and the two lead actors,Tom Berenger and Billy Zane work well off each other.both are very well suited for this particular role and were very convincing.as for the degree of realism in the film,i can't speak to that,but i do know i enjoyed myself for 90 odd minutes,and sometimes it's enough to just enjoy a movie for the entertainment value.for me,Sniper is an 8/10