Sniper 470 (2002) (TV)

User Rating:

7.2/10   

Director:

Paul Holmes

Writer:

Paul Holmes (writer)

Release Date:

14 November 2002 (UK)

Genre:

Fantasy | Sci-Fi | War | Short

Cast

Billy Boyd	...	The Gunner
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Eliza Langland	...	The Mother
Carmen Pierquaccini	...	The Intruder

Runtime:

UK:25 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

The personal side of impersonal wars

Sniper 470 is a mood piece. Let me try and sum it up.

Imagine it's Sunday afternoon. You know, one of those Sunday afternoons when there's nothing on the telly and everyone else is off doing something else and it's grey outside and you just can't quite get settled and nothing feels right. Now imagine Sunday afternoon is five days long and on Monday morning you're probably going to die.

Sniper 470 has taken the current situation of impersonal computerised war that we saw in the first Gulf conflict to it's conclusion in a futuristic space war. It then refuses the impersonality and makes it intensely personal with many of the same sort of hardships faced by WWII soldiers (losing your friends, not knowing what's really going on) exacerbated by solitude such as they could never have imagined.

The frustration of sniper 470, the known unknown soldier, is illustrated to us by telling us nothing. Who is he at war with and why? This doesn't matter, we can only concern ourselves with this one man trying to fill the time before he dies. Seperated from family, love, even his orders are from a computerised voice. He can't see his friends die, can't offer them comfort, only watch their names scroll by on a computer screen.

The strength of Sniper 470 is in putting yourself inside it. The plot is incredibly basic, what it wants is for you to say, "My God, what must that feel like? How would I cope?"

So much of life is the waiting in between the moments of doing. Most films ignore that waiting, Sniper 470 is about the frustration and loneliness of that time and the strength and endurance needed to get through it and stay sane.

War is never impersonal as long as people are alone and in pain and dying. That's as personal as it gets.

On a more technical note, they've done a good job on the effects. The lighting was a little low for me but that's probably cause I was watching it at limited resolution on a computer screen. I'd love to see it on the big screen or at least a decent tv.

Billy Boyd was nicely understated. He played his character reserved, making us work to read his feelings. He got over the strength and patience that you would need to do what Sniper 470 does while at the same time portraying the frustration, the repressed fear and the moment when he knows, without a doubt, that it is all over.