Sayaka Akimoto makes her English-language debut here and is hardly the most convincing of Yakuza assassins, but she is a pretty colourful addition to the fold, allowing for some decent enough three-way sniper action, whilst Ryan Robbins appears to be enjoying being in his very own movie, playing the only sensible Agent and tracking down the real villains almost single-handedly. The Taken 3 / Angel Has Fallen vibe is strong, setting the stage for the on-the-run saga, although Assassin's End doesn't treat its audience like idiots, with two disparate Intelligence Agency operatives both choosing their own 'sides' with respect to the investigation the cleverer of them working pretty hard to get to the truth beyond the lie of Beckett's involvement. They're solid enough efforts, but only for what they are, with Assassin's End helmed by comic book artist and relatively new director Kaare Andrews (who even did his own 'drawn' version of the artwork) and thus sporting a slightly different look from the last four (which were all done by Don Michael Paul and Claudio Fah, alternately) as the Becketts are forced to fight on home turf. Hardly the Fast & Furious franchise, it's still best served by some knowledge of the previous outings, with familiarity with the returning characters a definite plus, and a setting of expectations likely commensurate to watching several of these straight-to-video flicks. If you've never seen a single Sniper sequel then this is probably not the best place to start. Sure, it's a limited production, stringing together a series of decent action sequences with a largely familiar plot, and hardly brimming with top tier acting, but since the series just won't die, you may as well accept it and go along for the ride, because it's a pretty enjoyable one. This would in turn spawn an unexpected slew of almost bi-annual DTV sequels, that would all bring Berenger back too - 2014's Sniper: Legacy, 2016's Sniper: Ghost Shooter, 2017's Sniper: Ultimate Kill and now Sniper: Assassin's End - adding in 24 and The Unit mainstay Dennis Haysbert, and proving, for the most part, increasingly fun, which includes this latest entry. A decade after the first film, perhaps when Berenger's career as a leading man was waning, he would return to do back-to-back sequels, which were watchable through a top tier straight-to-video prism, but still not a patch on the first, and then almost two decades after the first film, Sniper: Reloaded would soft reboot the franchise, introducing Beckett's son (Chad Michael Collins) and bringing Zane's character back into the fold. new kid action thriller, however the spawning of an 8-film franchise is something nobody could have predicted. It was entertaining, with its USP being the still-rare subject-matter of snipers, and with the Berenger/Zane duo making for a decent enough unlikely partners old school vs. Over 25 years on and the Sniper series is still going, with its 8th entry going down the Taken 3 / Angel Has Fallen route and seeing father and son Becketts framed and on the run with a deadly female sniper hunting them.ฤก993's Sniper was a pretty engaging 90s B-movie gem, seeing Tom Berenger and Billy Zane get into trouble in the Panama jungle, with Berenger at the height of his career, post- Platoon, and Zane being, well, Zane, as he dials it up to 11 on the crazy front.
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