iluv2viddyfilms
11-30-24, 10:23 PM
This film is currently streaming in the Criterion Collection Noirvember catalogue. Great little medium sized budget film from legendary blacklisted director Dmytryk (The Caine Mutiny). Just a couple of quick thoughts about this film. Great on-location San Francisco photography and shooting locations here. Our antagonist main character is an ex-convict who has been released from prison for the crime taking a baseball bat to a woman and now has escalated his fixation and hatred toward women by taking to shooting them with his WW2 M1 .30 caliber carbine. Hardly a sniper rifle... at all, but that point aside this is a solid procedural film and would make a great double or even triple bill with a couple of other San Francisco heavies featuring bat guano crazy characters... I'm thinking pair with it Dirty Harry and also Zodiac. Arthur Franz plays the killer who prowls around the streets and rooftops of San Francisco when he's not at work delivering and picking up for a dry cleaning company. He plays the role with reasonable restraint, but it's clear there's a direct connection between this film and character and that of the Scorpio Killer in Dirty Harry, almost 20 years after this noir came out.
The film is also note worthy for showing some inside police investigation stuff, the myriad of false leads, and how the criminal psychologists aren't always in alignment with the detectives on the case. The only thing that I take issue with is less of a quality problem, and more of the messaging or politics of the film when it seems to take the stance that catching the killer after they have already started killing is all good and well, but the real problem lies with all those crazy killers waiting in the wings who haven't pulled the trigger yet, but we know they will based on their psychological profile! This is some real counter Minority Report stuff here and the way the film seems to be so lackadaisical with its psychologically and "Lock em up! He hasn't killed yet, but no doubt, he fits the profile and will kill tomorrow! Take is gun and send him to the psyche ward unit!" This whole aspect of the film is puzzling at best and deeply concerning and entirely dismissive of due process and individual rights at worst. Red flag laws would fit right at home in a world of this police department. So to say this film is a bit preachy is true. However if a viewer either can get past that, or if Heaven forbid they agree with this nonsense, then The Sniper might be right up their ally.
It is a very good and I imagine very influential film, not only with Dirty Harry and Zodiac, but also I would bet with Targets too. And yes, San Francisco has very rarely looked this good in film, Hitchcock's Vertigo and McQueen's Bullitt aside. Also I have to give props for the film's handling of showing firearms and the importance of looking at caliber and casings left at crime scenes, trajectory and line of sites of shots, and some of the psychologically is spot on even if its conclusions are entirely off base and completely whack. Again, if we lived in the film's world where everyone who has even daydreamed or fantasized of committing a crime actually did so in reality, we'd have a crime rate a thousand times higher than reality. We live in the real world however and for every one crime or murder that actually is committed we know there are a thousand or a million that have been thought about which never see fruition. In the real world we separate thoughts from actions, but apparently in Dmytryk's and writer Harry Brown's world of The Sniper, that's not a thing.
The film is also note worthy for showing some inside police investigation stuff, the myriad of false leads, and how the criminal psychologists aren't always in alignment with the detectives on the case. The only thing that I take issue with is less of a quality problem, and more of the messaging or politics of the film when it seems to take the stance that catching the killer after they have already started killing is all good and well, but the real problem lies with all those crazy killers waiting in the wings who haven't pulled the trigger yet, but we know they will based on their psychological profile! This is some real counter Minority Report stuff here and the way the film seems to be so lackadaisical with its psychologically and "Lock em up! He hasn't killed yet, but no doubt, he fits the profile and will kill tomorrow! Take is gun and send him to the psyche ward unit!" This whole aspect of the film is puzzling at best and deeply concerning and entirely dismissive of due process and individual rights at worst. Red flag laws would fit right at home in a world of this police department. So to say this film is a bit preachy is true. However if a viewer either can get past that, or if Heaven forbid they agree with this nonsense, then The Sniper might be right up their ally.
It is a very good and I imagine very influential film, not only with Dirty Harry and Zodiac, but also I would bet with Targets too. And yes, San Francisco has very rarely looked this good in film, Hitchcock's Vertigo and McQueen's Bullitt aside. Also I have to give props for the film's handling of showing firearms and the importance of looking at caliber and casings left at crime scenes, trajectory and line of sites of shots, and some of the psychologically is spot on even if its conclusions are entirely off base and completely whack. Again, if we lived in the film's world where everyone who has even daydreamed or fantasized of committing a crime actually did so in reality, we'd have a crime rate a thousand times higher than reality. We live in the real world however and for every one crime or murder that actually is committed we know there are a thousand or a million that have been thought about which never see fruition. In the real world we separate thoughts from actions, but apparently in Dmytryk's and writer Harry Brown's world of The Sniper, that's not a thing.