Sniper: Special Ops is not connected with the Sniper series. In this one, Seagal plays a sniper who, I guess because he's in his mid-60s, spends most of his time sedentary and only moves when he has to. That unfortunately leads to him getting hemmed in by the baddies when a mission goes bad, and Tim Abell wants to go in and save him. He can't right away though, because he needs to go get supplies from a broken down vehicle--the thinking being that Seagal isn't going anywhere anyway, so there's no rush. Things seem off to Abell though. Will he get to the bottom of it before he and his men become collateral damage?
I don't know if I would call this a bait-and-switch, and I'll tell you why: when I see Fred Olen Ray directs and Tim Abell in the cast, I have a hunch who's carrying my movie, and I'm actually good with it. In fact, it allows me to have more fun with the fact that Seagal is spending most of the film sitting while Abell is the one out there taking care of business. Yes, in a just world Abell would be in the foreground of the cover of this with his name across the top, with Seagal sitting in a chair in the background and his name below Abell's, but that's not how it works, and I think Fred Olen Ray knows Abell gets that, and also knows it's up to him to make or break this; and also for a guy like Ray who does films on the quick and dirty, he needs to know he can call on people like Abell to play the part he needs as professionally as possible. This movie's not perfect by any stretch, but at 86 minutes, even the rougher parts move along quickly enough to make it enjoyable.
The IMDb synopsis actually mentions Abell first before Seagal, which I thought was a nice touch. I think the easy thing to do here is say that because Abell served in the military that that explains why he's good in this role--and I may have been guilty of that as well, except we saw him turn in an absolutely chilling performance as the baddie in the Mark Dacascos film Instinct to Kill, so his ability to carry this movie goes beyond his military background. I think the problem for Abell is he doesn't always get parts that have the weight to them that allows him to show what he can do. What's great about this situation is it feels like Fred Olen Ray is thinking, I need to lean on Abell to make this work with the time and budget constraints I'm under, and I think that comes from working with him a lot and knowing what he can do. I still put the Instinct to Kill performance above this one, but it's good to see Abell get the lead in a film, even if he's not on the cover.
And that leads us to our film's one Hall of Famer. If you go to Simon's review on Explosive Action, he actually does a breakdown of Seagal's screentime in the film. It's that scant. Normally I lead with the Hall of Famer, but I felt like Abell deserved the top billing he didn't get on the cover. There are two ways to look at Seagal's character: one, why is he even in this if this is all he's doing? or two, it's kind of a fun novelty that he's playing this small part. I think the funnier one might be Rob Van Dam, because he's also not in this much, but gets second billing, and I wonder how much they thought people might misread the cover and think it means Jean-Claude Van Damme. My understanding is Seagal and Van Damme don't get along, but I don't remember Rob Van Dam and Seagal having any scenes together, so they could have been in the movie together. Maybe that's something we can look forward to, a Seagal-Van Damme team-up where neither has any scenes together. The interesting thing is, his next review puts him in the 30 Club. He'll make a very interesting addition for sure.
One aspect of the film didn't play well with me, and that was at the base when Charlen Amoia, who plays an admiral's daughter trying to get pictures of the fighting, gets manhandled by Abell when he doesn't want her taking pictures. Abell is a very intense guy, and Amoia is very slight, so it made me uncomfortable to see him push her around like that--it was a different story when there was shooting and he had to pull her out of the way to save her. The way they end up growing on each other, it almost felt like Ray threw that in there as a kind of screwball comedy moment, and maybe that was the idea and under a tight shooting schedule they didn't have time to see how it looked after--or if by knowing how it would all turn out, it didn't feel as off-putting while shooting it. Just something that was a little bit off for me.
I wanted to wrap up by talking about Fred Olen Ray. This is his 14th tag here on the site, which puts him behind only Albert Pyun for most tags by a director. That might be a sign of things to come this fall when we talk Hall of Fame inductees, but right now, looking at his current work, it's a lot of TV movies--in fact, I believe this is the only movie that wasn't a TV movie that he's done since 2015. A lot of them are Christmas movies, which in a way makes sense, because the cable networks need tons of those, and who better than someone like Ray who can get it done quick and under budget. It makes sense for Ray too, because he doesn't need to worry about all the special effects he does in a film like this or some of the horror movies. That's not a problem for us though, he still has a ton of stuff in his back DTV catalog that we need to get to, and it could take years to exhaust it with reviews.
But that's for another day, right now we're wrapping this one up. If you're a Seagal fan, this is really for completists only. For a low budget DTV military actioner though, it does the trick, and I think with Tim Abell's performance, we can also enjoy the novelty of Seagal's small role. Right now you can still get it on Netflix, so it's not a bad deal to be able to watch it as part of the service you're already paying for.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0676248
I consider this the worst kind of "bait and switch". As a devoted Seagal follower, used to seeing him sit on the sidelines, I was crushed to see him reach this new low. There's no way he should have had top billing / top credit on this. It should have been "and Steven Seagal" as it was in TICKER. I couldn't settle for the main part of the story as I was just waiting for Seagal's scenes. Tim Abell was great in STORM TROOPER, which I rewatched last week and it was unjust for him (like other surrogate leads in recent Seagal films, like Bren Foster in FORCE OF EXECUTION) not to get their name and face on the artwork.
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