The Marksman (2005)

Really Surprised!

Please don't spend money on this.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

The Marksman starts as a high level Government meeting is held in Washington DC, some bloke named John (William Hope) & his assistant Amanda (Emma Samms) tell the top brass about Russian bad guy General Egor Zaysan (Dan Badarau) who has recruited a load of Chechen rebels to seize control of a nuclear power planet. It's claimed Zaysan plans to re-core one of the reactors to create a huge nuclear bomb & that cannot be allowed to happened, the US must act & with several American scientists held as hostages there is only one man for the job, marine Painter (Wesley Snipes) who has to planet a homing device on the uncored nuclear reactor to set up a precise missile strike. Can he do it? The fate of tens of thousands of lives rests in his hands but just as Painter thinks the job is done he discovers that he & his team were betrayed & set-up & it's up to him to put things right...Directed by Marcus Adams this is yet another straight-to-video action film from Sony Pictures shot in Eastern Europe featuring a one time Hollywood action star, in this particular case it's Wesley Snipes. Everything about The Marksman is slow & lethargic, I must admit that it's not the worst low budget action film out there but it largely forgettable. The plot about some mad Russian General wanting to use a nuclear power plant as a huge bomb is something more suited to a Bond film & is a half way decent plot but as I said it's all so slow & forgettable, there are numerous bits where people in suits talk shadowy conspiracies that don't really go anywhere & have little dramatic impact because of the way these revelations & supposed twists are just dropped into the film with nothing to back them up. The whole idea of the elaborate set-up & the reasons behind it are reasonably good & quite ambitious for a film such as this but the script doesn't handle things properly with major revelations just tossed in there with no regard to dramatic impact & the low budget doesn't help either. The character's are all walking clichés, there's the hard nosed but fair Captain, the one man army, the one who has all the one-liners & swears a lot & when the chips are down a heroic one. Snipes character puzzles me, sure he has a troubled past & all that but he barely has any dialogue at all in this, in fact I doubt he has more than five or six lines throughout the entire thing & comes across as pretty uninterested in the whole affair. Also the first fifty or so minutes of The marksman are really slow going, virtually nothing happens apart from US soldiers wandering around at night & it's not until the end when the action kicks in by which time I am sure many will have switched off.The only thing anyone really needs to know is how good is the action? Well it's not brilliant but it's alright, there's a tank which drives through a wall & little else, there are a few explosions, there's a shoot-out or two & surprisingly there's little or no fist fights which considering Snipes background seems odd & a bit of a waste. Like a lot of these films The Marksman cannabises footage from it's peers, scenes from Top Gun (1986), Iron Eagle (1986), Navy Seals (1990) & Active Stealth (1999) are all edited into this & I think it's about the third or fourth time I have seen that parachute jump sequence from Navy Seals turn up in another film.Shot in Bucharest in Romania the film has a grey look to it, there's very little colour & I suppose it's meant to invoke the bleak cloudy weather of Eastern Europe or at least people perception of it. The acting is OK for this type of thing but Snipes seems to sleepwalk his way through this & as already mentioned barely has any dialogue.The Marksman isn't the worst straight-to-video shot in Eastern Europe action film out there but it's not the best either & has little to recommend it despite a slight better & more complex plot than usual, it's hard to recommend this even as something to watch for free on telly.

I was given this film in error when I tried to rent 'Marked for death' from Blockbuster. I can only assume a similar mix up allowed the script to get the go ahead first place. The only (literally the only) good thing I can say about this is that there was some nice lighting in places. Other than that this film was a f*****g abortion. The characters puerile, the dialogue was boring and generic, the plot was ill conceived and unrealistic. I am a big fan of the 'so bad it is good' genre (Death Wish, Commando, Exterminator, that kind of thing) but this does NOT fall into this category. This is just bad in a sense that makes it boring. My advice to you my friends is don't bother, get Marked For Death instead.

I only watched it to the end because it was a rental - had we gone to see this at the cinema I'd have asked for our money back.Some glaring problems here - the sound recording was sub-standard, so you couldn't hear the lines properly. The dialogue was clumsily delivered - almost stumbled through - something any half-decent director should have spotted right away.I think they could have made the film passable had they sorted the sound & dialogue, and took the time to focus the action. The whole thing felt hurried and low-budget.Disappointing FX for an action movie - either stock footage, cheap sparks/fireworks or studio overlays. I've only seen it one time through (That's quite enough), but it's probably been shot with only 4 or 5 locations, with stock for the rest.One redeeming feature was the lighting. For obviously hurried shots, digicams and cheap locations, the lighting crew did a good job and brought some of the only atmosphere to the film. Some credit has to go to camera there, but the scenes seemed so half-thought-through it must have been difficult to bring imagination to the movement - Photography is routine and adequate.The last word on technique and the second redeemer is editing. Whoever edited this obviously has talent - how anybody could string this carnage together is beyond me - and just got away with it.Overall? This wouldn't get any respec' from even your most chavved-up action junkie. The Marksman is blatantly written, directed and produced by accountants with no imagination or inclination to bother - so don't.

Poor cinematography, poor soundtrack, in fact just plain poor all round. The only condition under which this movie should be watched is if you're completely plastered, but still having trouble getting to sleep... this film will do the trick.The use of gadgets and gizmo's is yet another aspect of this movie which has been badly mistreated, just there to fill space in between boring action sequences. In fact in that respect they are much like this paragraph, of no real use but still required by the movie industry so the back cover doesn't give a duration of 10 min which is really all the plot was good for.