Expected more

An Exercise In Nonsense

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

My wife and I had finished watching something pretty good on N..F x (yes, that can happen), and she then called it a night while I decided to check out some stupid B (C or D) list action movie. I've sometimes been pleasantly surprised. Although usually not. This movie falls into the not category. Or make that NOT.I gave it a rating of two only because I only give ones when I'm offended. This wasn't offensive. It was just all the other bad and irritating things a truly bad movie can be: boring, pointless, derivative, fake, cheap, slapdash, cheesy, cliché-ed and ... in the end ... barely having any claim to be either a war movie, or a sci-fi movie. I'm usually offended by attempts to become philosophically deep ... scenes thrown in to drive home some drively political "message". But this movie, while it almost tried, made such a lame attempt at it that it was basically inconsequential to the rest. Almost tried, is a good definition of this entire production. It doesn't even try.This movie doesn't need a spoiler alert, because the ending is so obvious that even the premise and the description of the first 20 minutes gives away the ending.Take away the so-called sci-fi touches, this is just an American sniper in -- someone suggested Afghanistan -- but definitely some middle eastern country, battling ISIS or the Taliban. His unit has been wiped out, and now he's alone and the only way to escape is to ... stay where he is and scan the desert region endlessly, and watch the camp of the bad guys, endlessly. If you removed the scenes of him looking through his scope and not seeing much of anything, you'd cut this movie down to an hour. Sometimes, just for whatever (to get a bit of food or water maybe) he goes down and attacks the camp, miraculously killing anyone he comes across. Nothing's believable. He's immortal. He can be in a firefight with 20 bad guys shooting at him with automatic rifles, and he takes them out with karate kicks, a pistol, or a knife. He actually gets captured at one point, that that of course was no problem. A slight diversion, and he's rescued.Just for the sci-fi dimension, he's supposedly on some planet. For some reason, he's supposed to be a good guy, although you're left wondering how the good guys can be that, when they are the ones who have invaded this planet and the people who are there are "insurgents". There's no attempt to deal with this ambiguity. It's all just boo-rah ... including recuperating your dead.The sci-fi thing is provided by some 2001 Space Odyseey command ship which, like a spy satellite, can watch the sniper's every move. But they don't do anything up there but comment on how great he is, or how he's in terrible danger all the time, and make plans to save him but never can for reasons that no one bothers to really explain. The actors playing the command ship scenes, which consists of some black painted plywood set, have nothing to say but ... well, there he is, getting into a cave, or there he is, running around, or whatever ... and the commander seems to know everything that is happening, including the sniper's motivations and plans. It's remarkable.And remarkably lazy ... or just stupid ... writing. Some people call this sort of thing uninspired. But that's a term you'd use for someone who is perhaps capable of being inspired? This is obviously the level of writing you get from someone who is only capable of the most cliché-ed ideas. Nothing is original. And the director really can't do anything with it but throw in some lame fight scenes, long survey-the-desert sequences, and drop a few "alien"/human socio-cultural "exchanges. And there's a really bad guy, actually two ... a bad/bad alien guy who looks like he's straight out of Kabul, and the good/then bad human guy, to I guess show that this whole human adventure on this planet is bad? Or? ... And there's a very sexy alien princess this sniper is suddenly protecting, thrown in, to make sure there's SOME reason for the sniper to seem like a hero.I get irritated when I see this sort of thing. OK, I get it. This provided work for some people. But ... wow ... what gets me is that these types of Netflix filler fodder aren't put through some sort of quality process. The writer of this thing should never be given any more money, ever, for full length movies. There are probably several hundred other aspiring writers who could have provided something more interesting. Or at least not so laughably cliché-ed.

SNIPER ELITE is a very low budget science fiction thriller that tries to go for the same style as EDGE OF TOMORROW, but instead fails quite miserably. It was shot out in the desert somewhere and has a bunch of soldiers battling aliens who have glowing blue eyes and blue blood. Our hero is a bone-headed grunt who falls in love with one of the alien women and thus undergoes a conflict of interest. B-movie stalwart Kevin Sorbo has a small cameo but mostly this is senseless, shot-on-the-cheap nonsense that's not even worth sitting through.

It is so obvious the 'bad Aliens' are supposed to represent Muslims.. the ethnicity of the actors who play the parts of the aliens are of middle-eastern descent or closely resemble Arabs and middle-eastern. The way the female alien and the leader of the aliens are dressed clearly resembles that of tribes men and women. In my opinion whoever made this movie had an agenda... and it was anti-Muslim. Before anyone gets the idea I am Muslim and I am being over sensitive.. think again, I am an atheist and as far as I am concerned all religions are ridiculous. But what is even more ridiculous is someone making such a cringeworthy and obvious piece of anti-Muslim propaganda. To make things worse, it is a dreadful story line, really bad dialogue, poor production quality and badly acted. Watch it and decide for yourself.

This movie is a bad sniper movie and an even worse science fiction movie. It looks cheap in all aspects. The CGI looks cheap and makes no sense at all. The bombardment scene in the beginning is a joke (a building collapsing like being demolished by carefully set explosive devices). The animations of vehicles look like SF games from the 90s.The costumes and weaponry are 90s Earth, on both sides (alien side too!). They did not even try to make them look different. Only the firing sound comes out of a PC and sounds just like that. The effects of bullet hits are erratic, sometimes solid rock explodes, sometimes a helmet face get's cut off as clean as with a laser torch, guy inside totally unharmed. Then suddenly, the "hero" starts running through enemy lines without any cover and takes them all out firing a pistol. Needless to say, that none of them shooting assault rifles hit him seriously, they already spent their luck moments before, cutting down his entire unit without resistance.The sniping techniques are beginners at best, most of the stuff shown is only show and has no real use. The reticules are fantasy style and use blurry hexagons to make shooting even harder.The movie has zero story. A few screens showing you beautiful young women try to tell you the basics of what has happened. Humans went to an alien inhabited planet and started a war. The "aliens" look 100% identical to humans (yeah, budget i know) wearing turquoise contact lenses. They speak in a rough makeup language producing metallic and static sounds that make no sense (no, they are not cybernetics). They wear black (evil color) suits and metal helmets that look a bit like a knight's helmet meets Darth Vader.The whole movie,yes the whole movie, is made up of scenes where the protagonists runs away, hides, sets up to snipe a few of his pursuers, then continues. Ah, and a few scenes on board a mysterious military station in orbit where officers watch and comment his actions but do NOTHING to help him.Finally he meets the damsel in distress, an alien woman, confronts a fellow human soldier (he must defeat him in close combat obviously) and get's saved by his enemy, the alien sniper because he showed mercy and compassion to the atrocities done to the aliens by humans (his comrades).The whole movie was an excuse to show someone use a sniper rifle (wrongly).If you are looking for a science fiction movie, skip it. If you are looking for a sniper movie, look further. Nothing else to be seen here. Overrated Miss Aiden doesn't add anything to the movie, even trying to look good is a pain here.One can only hope that the director will not raise any further money via Kickstarter to undertake another adventure into the realms of movie making. This movie was not even well-meant. If it was a student's first full movie attempt...no, even then it would disappoint.