Sargent Brandon Beckett (Chad Michael Collins) is located in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as part of the UN Forces. Beckett is ordered to go into an area divided by hostile rebel activity to extract a European farmer, but when he arrives his squad is ambushed by a sniper who kills them all, except Beckett. Looking for a way to find the person responsible, he turns to Richard Miller (Billy Zane) a sniper professional in charge of training other soldiers in sniping. But Miller’s ways aren’t what Beckett is looking for, so not Beckett must adapt to a new way of fighting in order to succeed in his mission.

I am not very familiar with the Sniper series that lead to three titles during the 90s starring Tom Berenger and Billy Zane (the latter only appeared on the first title). To my surprise it’s sort of an odd choice for a series to be rebooted, given that two of the three films were straight to DVD. Sniper: Reloaded kept the traditional direct to video quality with a story that started with some promise and quickly went down South. The story just simply not up to par, although there were a few action scenes that were good, but also plenty of improbable situations. Let’s not forget that the film even included a love scene that was just really bad.

Going back to the story and its characters, Billy Zane was good with his character; I suppose some of the fans of the old series are happy to see him back. Zane and Collins were good together and they really got along and it is noticeable throughout the film. However, I wasn’t entirely satisfied by the time the films’ credits began rolling, Zane and Collins were good, but giving them all that time on the screen wasn’t a great idea. I mean the film definitely needed some other protagonists that could bring some support to the story. There was just not enough to keep viewers completely entertained.

Sniper: Reloaded arrives on Blu-ray with a 1080p MPEG4-AVC encode framed at 1.85:1. If this was a transfer for a high profile film I think there would be plenty of angry faces, but being a straight to DVD there is not much to expect. Colors are natural and black levels are deep and well resolved. Skintones appear to be normal. Detailing is very inconsistent though, several scenes display a good amount of revealing textures and sometimes they would appear dull. Given the shooting locations I would have expected better-looking shots of the terrain, but that wasn’t the case. Overall, the film looks decent on Blu-ray.

Sniper: Reloaded arrives on Blu-ray with a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio lossless track. The audio portion of this release is the best part about it. The dialogue suffers in a few scenes, but the rest of the film the dialogue is well reproduced. Surrounds are active creating good ambience and atmospheric effects throughout. The bass is active during the firefights providing power to create more believable action scenes. Overall, Sniper sounds good on Blu-ray.

This release does not include any real supplements only some previews.

Those acquainted with the previous Sniper releases might find some enjoyment with the reboot, for the rest they might find this release a hit or miss. The inclusion of Billy Zane brought some dynamic to the film that Chad Michael Collins couldn’t entirely do on his own. Zane and Collins do a good job, but sadly the story wasn’t entirely engrossing, some good action scenes here and there but nothing more. The Blu-ray has a decent video transfer and the audio is much better than expected. I would recommend a rental and nothing more.