By Fiorela Gonzales

War comes to the front door in the Australian film, Seven Snipers. Directed by Australian director Sandra Sciberras and set in the backwoods of a remote Australian farm, it takes the classic war film and changes the scenery. Though an interesting idea, it ends up missing its mark by the end.

Kris “Voodoo Child” Hendricks (Radha Mitchell) is a retired elite sniper who lives on a remote farm in Australia with her daughter, Anja (Annabel Wolfe). The film wastes no time and drops you directly into the action of the film. Right from the very top, a mysterious Jeep drives onto the premises, and Hendricks makes no assumption of friendliness as she immediately snips his wheel, and the entire car smashes around in a low budget crash. The driver of the car tells her that The Dragon is coming and Hendricks kills him immediately. With this new knowledge, Hendricks moves quickly to pack up, but with her daughter not in school where she was supposed to be, she calls in reinforcements from snipers of her past to protect her.

The reinforcements arrive as a rag tag group of snipers, one of which flees when learning the real nature of the mission is the arrival of this elusive Dragon. Meanwhile, The Dragon (Tim Roth) has found the daughter and murdered her boyfriend when Anja left him to go back home. She arrives at a house full of snipers, realizing the true nature of her mother’s past. The snipers are all picked off one by one by the Dragon, who hides in the woods and seems to be both everywhere and nowhere throughout the hundreds of acres of land that the farm sits on. For being an elite ex sniper, Hendricks never can seem to find the Dragon or hit anything. Eventually the Dragon finds her and tells her his plan of killing off her entire sniper crew, then her, and then taking Anja away with him to her “rightful place”, alluding to a history between Hendricks and the Dragon.

The first 45 minutes of the film are tense, though low budget, and the Dragon is an elusive and interesting character that you want to learn more about. The other snipers are mere plot points to be used as head shots for the Dragon. Though the movie is called Seven Snipers, ultimately, it’s just two snipers who do anything as the others get quickly picked off, and the ones that don’t die never even shoot anything. Though the first half is a fun ride, watched mostly through the sniper POV, it does hit a midway point slump of “is this all it’s going to be for the entire runtime? Two snipers shooting each other from a distance and always conveniently missing, though they’re both elite hunters?” They do try to add a mid-movie back story to move the story forward, but that ends up being more confusing than just letting the characters have no past.

Ultimately, the film fizzles into a final shootout between Hendricks and the Dragon, where they play Sniper roulette across the field, and each take turns shooting each other until someone hits the other. Hendricks’ aim is off due to the Dragon hitting her sniper scope from afar. And the Dragon’s aim is off for plot reasons – it’s not clear why he misses the first shot since he’s an elite sniper who was able to hit the tiny sniper scope earlier. It’s a bit of an anti-climactic ending, especially due to the nature of the game they’re playing because – why? Why are they taking turns in a civilized game of roulette? The Dragon is trying to take your daughter – just shoot him!

The movie excels in its B-movie action – it’s tense and thrilling right from the very top, even with its low-budget visual effects. Unfortunately – that can’t sustain itself for its entire runtime. The added emotional stakes of the story, both between Hendricks and her daughter and Hendricks and the Dragon, are not explored deeply enough to give it any depth. The titular seven snipers are also not interesting enough to get much backstory besides being one-note characters to get killed off. Only one sniper, named Milk for unknown reasons (played by Ioan Gruffudd) has a backstory with both Hendricks and Anja – to the point that the Dragon tells Anja she must choose between her mother and Milk. We never see much character development between any of these 3 characters, and also, Milk never shoots anything throughout the entire film.

For a movie called Seven Snipers, it’s really just two snipers, and neither seems to be very good at it when it’s not convenient for the plot. It’s lacking in depth and character development and loses its edge halfway through as it can’t sustain the same plot throughout the entire runtime. It hits its mark at the beginning, but like the broken sniper scope misses its target by the end.

2 ½ stars.