Seven Snipers

Bluesky

Sanda Sciberras’ Seven Snipers in an exercise in low budget filmmaking. Perhaps building on the oft-quoted premise that all one needs to make a movie is a girl and a gun, she has assembled a small group of actors, a few guns, a tent and a couple of vehicles beside a ramshackle house in one of the gentler parts of the Australian countryside, and taken it from there.

The plot is simple. Kris (Radha Mitchell) lives in the house with her daughter Anja (Annabel Wolfe), to whom she has taught archery and strict military-style combat discipline without ever really telling her why. Anja is a happy-go-lucky country girl distracted by voyfriend Michael (Lee Tiger Halley), bunking off school and taking little interest in what boring old people do – until, one day, Kris’ past comes looking for her, and she finds herself right in the middle of it. With former warlord the Dragon (Tim Roth) seeking revenge, the harried mother calls for back-up, and a maverick team of ex-military sharpshooters arrives out of nowhere, at least some of them willing to die for her.

Appropriately enough, Mitchell and Wolfe built their careers on opposing teams – one Neighbours, one Home And Away – and they never do quite gel together, which in the circumstances is more of a help than a hindrance. Mitchell is on fine form otherwise and does most of the heavy lifting in the film. We don’t get much explicit backstory, so it’s the chemistry between the actors that’s important to making this slight story convince, and for the most part, it’s there.

The sniping part of the film is tougher to pull off. It’s not much of a spoiler to say that the Dragon is playing a game of sorts, which explains why, close as he gets before first being spotted, he doesn’t just produce a machine gun and mow them all down. Nevertheless, it’s difficult to tell an engaging cinematic story built around an activity which mostly involves lying still – sometimes for days – and trying not to be noticed. This means that there is little real sniping, just some sharp shooting, which isn’t quite the same thing. Furthermore, because it would be boring if all we got was a series of clean deaths with no warning and no prospect of escape, none of the shooters can really be all that impressively skilled.

There are a handful of effective set pieces, especially early on. The pacing is decent, with not too much drag. Towards the end, hgowever, the emotional arcs of the remaing characters become less convincing, and at the end, though some lives have ended and others changed irrevocably, one can’t help but feel that not much has happened. The effect is rather like watching a stretched short or an unusually well shot TV movie. Nothing major is wrong with it – there’s just not a lot that will stick in your memory.

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