My Cultural Diet

Russell Mulcahy’s Silent Trigger has some serious strikes against it. Its storyline about a sniper (Dolph Lundgren) and spotter (Gina Bellman) was obviously meant to be enigmatic but instead, it’s convoluted and nonsensical. (I’m pretty sure some critical scenes were left on the cutting room floor.) The dialog is filled with clichés. And as for the performances, Bellman was probably going for femme fatale, but her breathy delivery and doe eyes are more pouty than edgy. Meanwhile, Christopher Heyerdahl chews up all the scenery as a deranged, coke snorting misogynist. That said, Silent Trigger is firmly lodged in my subconscious thanks to catching bits of it on Cinemax back in the day, so I can’t help but have a certain fascination with it. Lundgren’s screen presence is undeniable (clunky dialog aside) and the film occasionally possesses a cool atmosphere via the abandoned skyscraper set design (which is all ’90s brutalist techno-chic), the soundtrack’s New Age-y ambience (chants included), and the script’s flirtation with existentialism. With some adjustments and tightening, Silent Trigger could’ve been a true ’90s cult classic. Instead, it’s just more of a curiosity piece.

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