Sniper: The White Raven
As if the significance of its release now wasn’t already obvious, the final scene of “Sniper: The White Raven” shows the main character, in the snow, preparing to take aim just outside of Kiev, Ukraine, as Russian forces march on the city in February of this year. Russian aggression into Ukraine is what shapes the narrative of this film; American action cinema shapes this film. The collision is thrilling and captivating.
Made with the support of the Ukrainian government and armed forces, “Sniper: The White Raven” is military propaganda told through the language of American action filmmaking. This film is not more propaganda than, say, “American Sniper,” which is a good comparison for this film. Both characters are inspired by tragedies in their homeland, and use that righteous anger to make their mark on the tides of war for revenge. While the realities of the Iraq war makes Chris Kyle’s war questionable, Mykola is fighting in his own country, to save it from an invading force. Mykola is also William Wallace and Maximus, with emotional motivation to fight- Aldoshyn Pavlo gives a strong performance that keeps us riveted to the screen.
Mykola starts the movie as a pacifist; he is teaching physics to his class at the beginning of the film, and living off the grid with his wife, Nastya (Maryna Koshkina). They just want to live in a way that helps the world. Not long after the start, Russian forces invade Crimea, and two soldiers come up on Mykola and Nastya’s home, and after a violent attack, Nastya (who is pregnant) is dead, and Mykola is taken by military forces; he wants to fight for revenge. He becomes a sniper, and his work helps Ukraine hold ground against Russia.
Co-written by sniper Mykola Voronin, the screenplay follows as familiar a structure as any action/revenge movie ever has; what makes it pop onscreen is how director Marian Bushan absorbs the visual language of war films and action movies without allowing style to overwhelm the substance of the story they’re telling. The training montage where Mykola is learning to be a sniper is entertaining but also serious, and watching him in action is enthralling, while also keeping us on the journey of the character from where he started, to who he is now. This film has a stark visual palette, but it’s not bland like a lot of mainstream films do; it captures the unforgiving landscape, and there’s a scene where Mykola is in the classroom he taught in earlier in the film; it’s been abandoned since the invasion, and it’s a illustrative of the contrast of the character then and now. “Sniper: The White Raven” may be, fundamentally, propaganda, but it’s also rousing in a purely escapist way that some action films tend to forget about nowadays.
