We are used to see better movies from Ryûhei Kitamura, so if like me you were a little bit excited to see he made a new one, you are excused if you afterwards you think: well that wasn't really that good. Heck, even if you are really dissapointed (knowing the director or not),it makes sense. What does not make sense is going completely insane and insulting the people involved.

This is not Shakespeare so you can't expect that level of script, dialog or even acting. That does not mean that the people involved are not capable or have not the capacity to gain and reach those heights. Now this is a fun little ride, that could have been more and admittedly gets annoying at times (decisions by the main characters) and the ending is a bit ... well I personally didn't like it that much, but it did get a big laugh from the overall audience, so ... Anyway, this is not for the faint hearted, with all the graphic violence and blood on display. You've been warned

Japanese director Ryûhei Kitamura's sadistic sniper saga "Downrange" is aimed at those who adore gore. If you've an insatiable appetite for buckets of bogus blood, you should feel warm and fuzzy as you gorge yourself on this abrasive 90-minute fusillade set on a remote two-lane highway somewhere in sunny California. Although "Downrange" came out in 2017, the Amazon Shudder Channel appears to have resurrected this low-budget mayhem and given it a new lease-on-life in the Coronavirus pandemic. Nowadays, many films making their theatrical debuts are non-starters in terms of being audience attractions. Instead of releasing major tentpole movies, the studios are cluttering theaters with fodder which otherwise would have remained in limbo. Apparently, the Amazon Shudder Channel has done the same thing with Kitamura's exercise in nihilism by re-releasing it as a 'new' streaming and home video release at Redbox, Walmart, etc. Meantime, as a cinematic craftsman, Kitamura has proven himself a formidable director with several entertaining films. He helmed the derivative Ruby Rose "Die Hard" knock-off "The Doorman" (2020),the Luke Evans' thriller "No One Lives" (2012),the Bradley Cooper chiller "The Midnight Meat Train" (2008),and his own cult zombie feature "Versus" (2000). Anybody who directed an entry in the "Godzilla" franchise cannot be all bad. Kitamura put the monstrous lizard through the paces in "Godzilla: Final Wars" (2004). Clearly, Kitamura qualifies as more than just a gifted hack, but "Downrange" doesn't measure up to either his earlier or later fare. Neither the largely unknown cast nor the grim ending doesn't enliven this suspenseful thriller. Nevertheless, the headline grabbing trope of a sniper on a shooting spree with a dozen or more notches on his rifle still reflects a symptom of our woebegone times.

Cruising along a secluded stretch of two-lane blacktop highway, six carefree college kids--three girls and three guys-suddenly careen to a halt on the edge of the asphalt after their Ford Expedition's left rear tire blows out. Flat tires prove to be as much of a nuisance as they are a hazard, and the guys fumble around swapping out tires, while the girls search for an adequate cell phone signal. Rule number one of all suspense thrillers is isolate the protagonists. Kitamura and "Full Time Killer" scenarist Joey O'Bryan stick to this edict. Initially, these ill-fated twentysomethings don't realize they haven't run over anything which could have punctured their tire. Instead, an anonymous sniper in camouflage perched in a tree on a slope overlooking the road perforated their tire! Mind you, this dastard is no amateur marksman. Wielding a high-powered, bolt-action rifle equipped with night vision, this fiend can shoot at them with neither day nor night interfering with his aim. Meanwhile, our motley crew of protagonists, which includes a token African American male, are annoyed because they cannot get a cell phone signal to summon the police. Furthermore, they learn a gas station lies 20 miles down the road, and they had planned to have the mechanics inspect their handiwork. Moreover, it doesn't help matters that some of them are on a tight deadline, and the flat tire is going to delay their arrival at their various destinations. Eventually, while one of the guys is removing the flat tire, he notices the spent bullet as it drops out of the blown tread. Mere seconds elapse before the sniper puts his head in the crosshairs and squeezes the trigger. Until a quartet of county sheriff's deputies show up after dark to rescue the survivors, "Downrange" amounts to a stand-off with the unarmed teens using the Ford Expedition as a bulwark. Indeed, the Ford Motor Company couldn't have asked for better product placement for their SUV than this homicidal hellraiser.

In a 2018 interview with Joe Lipsett, Kitamura spoke about the premise of "Downrange." "This idea came to me five years ago. We were focusing on coming up with an idea - something high concept, because in Hollywood, it's all about the pitch. We were talking about what scares us." According to Kitamura, "The big guy with the axe or the machete wearing the mask, he doesn't really scare me - I can fight him. Sixteen years ago I made "Versus" because I wasn't afraid of the zombies. Ghosts? They don't scare me. Then Joey came up with this idea: what if you were targeted by a sniper? And that scared me. Because if I can't see him, I can't fight back...Three hours later, we had the idea." Mind you, sniper movies have been around since Edward Dmytryk's thriller "The Sniper" (1952) about a shooter who targeted young brunettes.

Unfortunately, despite its hair-raising suspense, "Downrange" lacks two elements which might have heightened its violence: smarter victims and an ending with a semblance of humanity. The doomed teens the sadistic sniper picks off at his leisure are a forgettable group. Some intolerant audiences may grow sick of them as they whine ad nauseum until they die. Eventually, we learn the Expedition driver bought the SUV because his girlfriend was pregnant, and they needed a bigger ride. Sadly, they lost their baby before the child could ride in the Expedition. Although these victims are barely fleshed out as characters, the villainous sniper who has a field day picking them off like turkeys remains a hopelessly mysterious murderer. We see this villain only in extreme close-ups until the finale when we learn he is indeed a genuine sadist. The scratched-up shoulder stock of his rifle with the double-digit hash marks of all those unfortunate folks he has blown away provides the only clue to his sadism. Miraculously, one wounded victim survives just long enough to turn the tables on him and pulverize his face like a smashed watermelon. The best Kitamura and O'Brien can do with this fair thriller is give it a ghoulishly ironic ending. Unless you relish watching how the filmmakers deploy barrels of bogus blood and the gore, "Downrange" provides little in the way of a catharsis.

So there are some truly horrible films even worse than this, but Downrange takes the cake as most uncreative and mind-numbingly dull, that I can recall.

You have chess club bland characters you couldn't care less about, with no setup or backstory, in one setting with pointless killing. Not even anything funny either, not one positive thing to say about it.