Taking a note from Charlize Theron, actress Radha Mitchell flexes her action chops in Seven Snipers. It’s an action thriller from director Sandra Sciberras and writer Andrew O’Keefe about a former army vet who has been raising her daughter off the grid until an old adversary with a vendetta discovers her whereabouts.
On a remote farm, Anja (Annabel Wolfe) practices archery while her mother, Chris (Radha Mitchell), offers her some pointers. After Anja’s boyfriend, Michael (Lee Tiger Halley), takes the teenager to school, the fun begins.
Phillips (Ryan Kwanten) shows up as a salesman inquiring about the property and making a possible proposal to buy it. Something smells off to Chris, and as Phillips leaves, she runs inside, grabs a sniper rifle, and begins shooting. Phillips has his own rifle and retaliates while sending a text message. He soon meets his fate, but not before revealing Chris’ code name to her: Voodoo Child, and the name “Dragon.”
Chris knows trouble is coming, and her first instinct is to get to Anja. Unbeknownst to her, Anja has skipped school and is actually camping with Michael. Chris calls in an old teammate, White Dog (Damien Ryan), who brings the cavalry: his son Junior (Charles Cottier), Kaldayev (Bianca Wallace), Nico (Pacharo Mzembe), and an old familiar face, Milk (Ioan Gruffudd). Dragon (Tim Roth) has also parachuted in, and it’s a game of who will get whom first, and whether Chris can get Anja out of harm’s way.
“… a former army vet who has been raising her daughter off the grid …”
I have to say that Seven Snipers is a pretty efficient film with a running time just shy of 90 minutes. It starts off quickly, even eliminating one of the threats, Ryan Kwanten, within the first ten minutes of the movie to set the tone for what audiences are in for. Story-wise, the movie is a bit predictable. Obviously, there’s gonna be some big standoff between our protagonist and antagonist, but seeing how each character stands up or goes down during the process is worth the watch.
One of the choices that I enjoyed about Seven Snipers is Sciberras’ use of the sniper scope to track targets. It took me back to when I used to play the video game Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell and take out targets from afar. It actually gave me the itch to pop that game back in and play it, or go out and buy whatever the newest version of Call of Duty is.
Casting-wise, Tim Roth always plays a great bad guy. His performance here reminded me of his villain in the movie Rob Roy, just a ruthless character. Ioan Gruffudd usually plays more vanilla, nice-guy characters, or ones who don’t get their hands dirty, but here he makes a convincing turn as a former military vet with a sleek haircut to boot. He could actually be brothers with Jon Bernthal in The Punisher.
I’ve seen Radha Mitchell wasted in supporting roles in other films, such as playing the wife in the Olympus Has Fallen franchise, where her character didn’t do much and was eventually replaced in the third movie by another actress. In her debut action role, with Sandra Sciberras at the helm, the two make a great duo, and Mitchell really shines.
"…how each character stands up or goes down during the process is worth the watch."
