User reviews

Overall plot could have been interesting but direction and casting was incredibly poor. Main actors were decades too old and obviously overweight and out of condition to be remotely believable as active duty soldiers let alone the top-shelf special forces they were portraying.

Soldier ranks and chain of command was completely wrong for the situation and even the most obvious military tactics such as securing a perimeter, finding cover/laying prone during a firefight or trying to avoid an obvious ambush were mostly ignored.

Character development was nil and supporting women only served to annoy the main characters without a hint of romantic interest or sex appeal which might have at least distracted viewers from an overall lackluster film. The audience was given little reason to care who won or lost and there was no interesting subplot, character drama or anything all that interesting to see in terms of actors, vehicles, aircraft or weapons.

In spite of the cast including 7th Dan Aikido black belt Steven Seagal and WWE pro wrestler Rob Van Dam there is never a single physical altercation, only a series of lackluster gunfights.

Some smaller problems the US weapons were obviously not government issue: barrel lengths, flash hiders, sights were all wrong as was the lack of typical support weapons on both sides.

Weapons usage was strange even for b-movies, most rifles were never fired full-auto, characters seemed to have ample ammo but most fired sparingly while the "sniper" was spraying everything in sight with full-auto fire. Later no one remembered to reload a nearly empty M9 pistol before starting a new gunfight...the same M9 pistol which proved far more accurate and deadly than any of the scoped M4 assault rifles the soldiers were firing.

Tim Abell showed some great acting skills and was a likable character as Sgt Mosby but unfortunately he was still far too old and out of shape to pull off the role.

The first scene looked quite promising, but after that, It's so bad it's horrible.

The sniper rifle is only used during this first scene, after that Seagal use an automatic rifle and he doesn't even bother to aim ; he sprays bullets at random in a prerecorded sequence that is used again and again.

Actually, Seagal doesn't do much ; he babysits his comrade from a safe place, for the major part of the movie, while another lame movie is playing with Rob Vandamme and an annoying spoilt journalist who can do it all.

Sniper:Special ops, is a low cost and boring movie that use a guest star to sell copies, but don't ask too much from them.

This movie involved Steven Seagal sitting in the chair for basically the entire movie. Random nobody's complete with a typical female reporter who suddenly knows how to run firearms. It's a giant suckfest but without the fun of a movie that knows that it sucks. Also Steven Seagal weighs 400 pounds.

Yet another in a long succession of horrible straight-to-video movies by Seagal of late. At least there were no CGI bullet holes in this one. What I don't understand is why producers can't hire a decent military consultant when shooting a war movie. Jeff Bosley (Doc) is a Green Beret, how he didn't die laughing during the filming is beyond me. Firearm handling is absolutely ridiculous, Rob Van Dam clearly has never fired a long gun before in his life. Charlene Amoia, who claims to be an "expert marksman" holds a pistol like it's a personal massager (wink-wink).

You see an assortment of optics on the team's rifles (ACOG, Aimpoint, Eotech) but the funniest is a tiny RDS on Segal's rifle that has superimposed hash marks when looking through it in Seagal's first- person view. Absurd.

Overall, horrible low-budget B-flick with bad story, horrible acting and a huge number of blunders. Save yourself some time and DO NOT watch it.

Segal and a gang of old hairy special ops get caught in Taliban fight an dfight and fight and then report to a colonel old enough to have fought at gettysburg! And a girl with baby who is daughter of Taliban cheif and more fighting and more moe fighting and Seagal mumbles hi sway through it all and men are dying left and right and up and down and... Oh dear this really is a boring film. I stayed watching to end because my neighbours had a party and I couldn't go to bed.

I like alot of Seagal DTV flicks & consider some of them "Gems" like his Driven to Kill,Pistol Whipped,A Dangerous Man & Belly of the Beast. Unfortunately as we all know, with some decent one's we also get the absolute Trash ones like: Attack Force,A Good Man,Shadow Man,Black Dawn & Sniper.

We all know Seagal isn't a good actor but we watch him for the old school brutal vigilante Justice he does to the scum of the world, that's his appeal as we grew up watching him & just enjoy watching his beat the crap outta bad guys. Here in this pile of poop, Seagal is a boring Sniper that sits around & it's just a weird & boring Iraq based war drama. Weird that Seagal was in this & even weirder that he produced it? Like i said i do enjoy alot of Seagal's DTV output but this one was boring & Seagal was a side character & i turned it off halfway through. Just a crappy one of his huge output

I've never knowingly watched a Steven Seagal movie before and I came into this one 5-10 mins after the start on late-night TV, so I didn't recognize him in the dark glasses and - as somebody else has pointed out here - expanded waistline. I quickly became mesmerized by it, simply because I couldn't believe that anybody really makes movies this bad any more. I thought I must be tripping.

For a start off, as we all know, according to that Paul Hardcastle song, the average age of the combat soldier in Vietnam was 19. According to Sniper: Special Ops, the average age of the combat soldier in Afghanistan appears to be about 59. The commanding officer in particular, played by actor Dale Dye who is in his 70s, looked monstrously miscast.

Then the guy in the dark glasses - presumably the sniper of the title and as I later discovered, played by Seagal - has to get up and get some water. He's behind enemy lines, there are potential snipers behind every wall, IUDs etc, and yes, I know he's hard and frightened of nothing, but wouldn't he have displayed just a little caution in walking around, instead of looking like he's strolling down to the neighborhood 7-11? I found myself yelling at the TV "you're an actor! Why don't you ACT?" Then I found out it was that famous and popular actor with the dozens of movies to his name, Steven Seagal. Wow.

That's 84 minutes of my life I will never get back. Though I must admit I did get a bit of a giggle out of it.

Steven Seagal's early movies like Out for justice and Marked for death are really great old school action movies but that was a LONG time ago. Sniper: Special Ops finds Seagal deep in to his not caring phase. He's fat, old and mumbles his lines like he doesn't care.

He performs his lines in the same way someone might read Ikea furniture instructions out loud but at the same time i got the feeling that he thinks the things he's saying are really cool and profound. They aren't.

The action is terrible, the acting is worse and most of Seagal's scenes feature him just sitting down and mumbling. If the star of the movie doesn't care then why should the people watching it?

Ludicrous and insulting, don't bother.

I watch all of Seagal films bad, good, semi. The one bad thing about this movie was Rob Van Dam didn't get killed of early in the movie, he looked so uncomfortable and out of place. Excellent performance by Tim Abel.

Top billed Seagal who is so fat, he can only sit and stand, while his words are meant to sound tough only come across as out of breath from doing nothing. Movie is slow paced with lots of gunfire.

Sensei Segeal why are you still trying to do movies? I mean your character has never changed one bit in the last 35 years. Its the same thing every time... please stop. please stop making this crap. Its embarrassing. Go back to the bayou and take your fake accent with you. You probably are a much better cop than you are at acting. Movie was so bad it doesnt even quality to be put on VHS cassette.

Fred Olen Ray's 'Sniper: Special Ops' is an Average fare at best. It lacks sharpness & also the tension one would associate with a film based on Snipers on a war-zone.

'Sniper: Special Ops' Synopsis: A Special Ops military Force are sent to a remote Afghan village to extract an American congressman being held by the Taliban.

'Sniper: Special Ops' needed better Writing. Olen Ray's Writing begins very well, but loses steam mid-way. And as I mentioned before, the tension & sharpness is missing here. Olen Ray's Direction, on the other-hand, is passable.

Performance-Wise: Steven Seagal is relegated to the backseat. Rob Van Dam does a fair job. Tim Abell is the pick of the lot. He's very sincere. Others lend the required support.

On the whole, 'Sniper: Special Ops' is just about okay.

Funny to watch if you are a fan of the old MacGyver series. It reminds me of the approximative ways it made you think you were in the Middle East while it looked so much like a California shooting site. Stephen seagal and Rob Van Dam are marketed as the top actors... You feel sorry for Seagal's part and Rob Van Dam should stick with wrestling. Tim Abell is pretty good though. He is the real actor in the bunch though...

This must be the worst military filmI have ever seen. It was so improbable that it was laughable. The acting was amateurish, especially the actress who played the photojournalist/Ninja warrior. Steven Seagal, the draw for this fiasco, played a minor role. That's just as well since he's a bit too old to be still playing these roles. He should remain in a production role for these type of films. He seemed to sleepwalk through the scenes he was in. And how old is Dale Dye? Still playing officers in war films? I realize that he's a respected, retired military officer but he was definitely too old to be in this film. I read that this film was completed in twenty days. It certainly showed. Perhaps more time should have been spent filming it. Better yet, creating the story and writing the script. This was a terrible film that I'm sorry I took the time to watch. I couldn't help myself,. It was so bad that I had to keep on watching.

Another Seagal movie, although he is hardly in this time. I am a big fan of Seagals, but the movie really belonged to Tim Abell, who is a great bad ass. It all feels realistic and down to earth, and, although Seagal has no fight scenes, he does get to kill a couple of terrorists. It is quite short and to the point, and is not graphic with its violence, which can be a pro or con. Seagal sits around a lot, and stays behind enemy lines to help an injured man, while the other team tries to get the military to help them. There is a relatively large body count, and Seagal does get quite a few. Van Dam is OK, but is sometimes wooden. He will be a great action star soon hopefully. Seagal has heaps of movies coming up, so that's why he is not in this much. Code of Honor, and the Asian Connection are also movies of Seagals that came out near this time. Killing Salazar is also upcoming, and I wonder when it will be released in the US and Au. Sniper Special Ops is an OK entertaining movie.

SNIPER: SPECIAL OPS stars Steven Seagal as, get this, a sniper attached to a Special Ops unit. Who knew? It's also the fourth film in what renegade film critic Vern has affectionately dubbed his "Goatee Era." The basic plot is that a Special Ops unit is performing a rescue mission in Afghanistan when things go south and turn into a firefight. Seagal and another soldier are left behind, and the remainder of the team gets sent on a side mission after returning to base, hoping to eventually go back and retrieve Seagal and the other guy, who are still waiting in place. I thought that the story was OK, but nothing special. As is typical with Seagal films, there is some stuff thrown about that makes it a little bit topical, and there was an authentic feel to the dialogue, costumes, and the way the actors carried themselves. All this was fine, and the performances were generally serviceable, if unremarkable. The major problem is the serious lack of Seagal himself. Although he is top-billed and appears on the poster, he really doesn't do all that much. Some other actor could have played his part and no difference would have been made. As for the action, it's mostly just a bunch of shootouts and firefights, and a couple of stock explosions towards the end. There were also a number of interesting throwaway lines and asides that made the characters a little more colorful than they were probably written. Overall, I found this seriously lacking as a Seagal film, but for what it's worth, SNIPER: SPECIAL OPS is a decent low-budget actioner that doesn't insult your intelligence too much.