Today’s quick review: The Marksman. The Painter (Wesley Snipes) is an American soldier who specializes in painting targets for air strikes. His skills get put to use when Johnathan Tensor (William Hope) orders him to Chechnya, where Igor Zaysan (Dan Badaru), a rogue Russian general, plans to turn an abandoned nuclear reactor into a bomb. But when the evac is sabotaged, the Painter and his team are dropped into the jaws of a trap.
The Marksman is a budget action movie starring Wesley Snipes. A team of American soldiers infiltrates Chechnya to set up an air strike, only to run into unforeseen complications. The Marksman is a basic action flick with no frills. Cheap stunts, a generic hero, and a plot with exactly one twist let it check the boxes of the genre without going to much trouble. The result is a serviceable but unexceptional watch with limited appeal.
The Marksman shows its budget in countless subtle ways. The bombed-out buildings and crumbling concrete structures are justified by the setting, but they still feel a little too abandoned. The firefights are passable but not especially creative, relying on basic gunplay and a few explosions for most of the thrills. Finally, while the movie avoids any glaring plot holes, some of the details don’t line up very well.
Nothing in The Marksman disqualifies it, and fans of the budget action genre will get almost exactly what they were promised. But aside from the one plot twist and some very mild intrigue about the Painter’s past, the movie has nothing memorable or attention-grabbing. Most viewers will do better elsewhere.
For Wesley Snipes as a similar character, try Unstoppable, The Contractor, or 7 Seconds. For a higher-profile action thriller about an American operation to recover Russian nukes, try The Peacemaker. For a budget action thriller with some of the same flavor, try Direct Contact.
[4.1 out of 10 on IMDB](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457090/). I give it a 5.0 for mediocre action and an adequate but uninspiring story.