SILENT TRIGGER starring Dolph Lungren, is a bad-but-fun action romp in the ex-soldier turned assassin sniper with a conscience sub-genre. Yes, we've seen this basic story before.
So, what do they give us "new" this time?
A female spotter (played by Gina Bellman of BBC's "Coupling"). Okay, a female sidekick is not really new.
But the sub-story of the security guard (played by Christopher Heyerdahl, who some might recognize from the TWILIGHT series) having a "thing" for said female sidekick, and the screentime devoted to this wasteful subplot, was sort of new. It's like the makers had a 50 minute movie that they wanted to last a bit longer (93 minutes), so they turned what should have been one scene (on the elevator) into an entire subplot.
Aaaaannnnnd, it's a subplot that introduced a gaping plot hole that was VERY distracting. So, Dolph Lungren is teh-sup3r-sn1per, making all manners of off-hand one-shot kills in the heat of a firefight...
with a sniper rifle in a firefight...and he's also super cool at getting them out of trouble in the field. But, he cannot 'handle' a coked up security guard with an inferiority complex regarding women and co-workers?
This is the sort of thing that adds to this movie's charm. It's laughably bad in ways but still manages to be entertaining...even if that entertainment is at times not much more than watching the train to see just when it WILL run off the tracks.
The fire visual effects are insanely bad and achingly obvious they are cgi overlays, even for 1996 cgi. The gun shot visuals are much better, with some attention to detail in the blood and guts department.
Story wise, we get hints at something like a backstory (even backstory to the extensive flash back sequences) and hints that there might be more to all this than what we are seeing. Then....nothing. Still, as empty as this shell turns out to be, I've seen action movies that commit the unpardonable sin of "boring" that this one does not.
So, if in the mood for an old-style over-the-top action flick that makes no sense in many ways, has laughable special fx, Dolph Lungren grunting dialog to a beautiful female lead, a soundtrack that at times does not in any way match the movie, SILENT TRIGGER is worth the watch.
3 out of 5 for simple 'bad movie' cheesy fun.
