Sniper 3 [Import]

This time around Thomas Beckett is sent out by NSA to track down and kill a druglord in Vietnam who happens to be his good friend whom he fought alongside in the war. Beckett is in for surprises as he finds out more details about his mission and about the reasons why he is sent there. He also partners with a local cop in Ho Chi Minh City, who is trained in martial arts.

Like Sniper 2, this movie looks low budget and features unknown actors, whose acting are just adequate (except the Vietnamese cop, who did a good job). Tom Berenger, however, is always good and makes up for the bad acting done by some of the others.

There are some things in this movie that are different:

a) It reveals more about Beckett's personal life than the other two films (e.g. his past, his friendships, his emotional side, etc.)

b) Some of the action is influenced by the Hong Kong action style, with the shoot-outs done in slow motion, and Beckett's partner getting to use his martial arts expertise to eliminate some of the bad guys.

c) Tom Berenger has gained a few more pounds since Sniper 2 and he seems to lumber rather than run. (He needs to shed some weight in order to be believable as a Marine Sniper.) However, to the script's credit, Beckett gets in trouble with his superior for his drinking and his lack of physical fitness.

I gave this movie 3 stars because it could have been a lot better, given a bigger budget, better story, well-known actors and accomplished directors that we recognize. Even so, there are worse ways to spend an evening.

Unfortunately, the DVD itself does not contain any special features.

This third story about Master Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Beckett fits in well with the other two because it draws atmosphere and story detail from both without becoming a clone. I liked the personal history bits about Beckett - we know very little about him as an individual but now we at least learn a few very interesting facets of his life. In the short scene in which he looked at his box of "memories", I recalled a scene in Sniper (1) where he was asked why he carried several sets of dogtags around and his reply - "respect". If you are a Berenger fan, and especially if you have seen Sniper 1 and 2, you will like this DVD. His Asian co-star was very good, especially in all the scenes shot about the slimey underbelly of Ho Chi Minh City. The action was less in this movie, but the story, direction and locales were well done and chosen. I was a bit sorry to see Tom has put on a few unneeded pounds, but, as the progression of the series warrants, he cannot look and act as he did in the early years - that would be a mistake! I hope you at least rent this DVD and do not miss out on a worthy episode about the life of Tom Beckett, the now reluctant Sniper. If you give the story a bit of thought, you'll see the psychological points shown about how Beckett is forever drawn into the former occupation which brought him acclaim and from which he cannot now withdraw.

My apologies to fans of this series. I enjoyed the first two of this admittedly low-budget series, but this one should have been left on the cutting-room floor. Who would believe that an aging, overweight alcoholic sniper would be first choice on a sensitive mission? And who would believe that an ACTIVE Marine sniper would be so out of shape at ANY age? I'm not knocking Tom Berenger for putting on a few, but come on -- make the story believable. Instead, we get the cliche of a tormented hero potentially drinking his life and career away. How many times has this been done?

My second biggest gripe was with the editing. Beckett was supposed to have lost his index (trigger) finger on his right hand; it was even a subject for this movie. So I'm sitting here watching his "missing" finger in almost every scene -- curled up, of course, but clearly visible. Couldn't they have at least tried to make this believable? This part would've been great on Saturday Night Live.

And what's up with the f-word in every scene with confrontation? Even the SUBTITLES were loaded with expletives. I'm no prude, but even a low-budget movie like this could've had a little class.

Overall, this was so weak as a movie I couldn't get into any of the characters, and I was really looking forward to it. It would have been a more convincing story line to have Beckett as an older mentor of a promising sniper, with a cheap prosthesis on his hand so we wouldn't have to pretend not to see the finger he lost years earlier, and weave his tormented past into his goals of retiring honorably, and even being involved in one last mission. But the way this was done was just plain disappointing.