The Sniper & The Photographer

With special thanks to my friends with connections, I got to attend the Asia Gala Premiere of The Sniper 《神枪手》 in Singapore at the Lido theater. I honestly just thought that I was there to watch a movie earlier than everyone else, until I met up with my friends and we saw ...

The Hordes of screaming fans and the masses of photographers, then the slight notion that I might actually see some stars dawned on me. Maybe that and the 10 million people crowding outside the cinema's entrance ....

Ritchie Ren and Edison Chen were outside the cinema with the hosts for a brief meet-the-fans session. Let's just say that when the brief 5-10 min event was over, there was a group of teenage girls weeping, and one of them was holding up her hand saying .. no actually, SCREAMING at the top of her lungs, "EDISON TOUCHED MY HAND.. OMG OMG OMG HE TOUCHED MY HAND" (Disclaimer : Caps are not for dramatic effect, they were really THAT LOUD)

We were a really nonchalant group. Firstly, we were late, so we weren't one of the fans that made their way to the front, we didn't have signboards, 5 of us had only 1 camera (which happened to be mine). When the stars appeared, we just stood behind looking at the crazy crowd in front of us, wondering if old age has caught up to us and being star struck was a truly long time ago.

Once we cleared all the security checks to get into the cinema, we were seated in the fourth row from the front, frowning that we were so near the screen. Of course, we made our fair share of distasteful jokes about forgetting our bullet-proof vests and all. After a while, the stars turned up again and this time, there was no crazy crowd and we just sat in our seats and had an up close and personal look at the stars.

SNAP SNAP SNAP
Sorry young screaming teenage girls, you will be a jaded adult with connections someday. Just not today. :P

To be fair, other than just seeing the actors today, the movie was actually pretty good as an action flick about a team of snipers. My closest encounter as a sniper was when I was playing Counterstrike in my teen years, always ambushing people from the dark. It wasn't really a show like that, it had a good story telling more of a sniper team with perspectives of three main actors (The Good, The Bad and The Arrogant). Go catch it if you have time ~