Chad Michael Collins first appeared as Sgt. Brandon Beckett in 2011's Sniper Reloaded, where he played the son of Tom Berenger's original marine sniper. Now, after multiple sequels, Collins is reprising the role for Sniper: Rogue Mission. This sequel finds Beckett going off the radar to expose a corrupt federal agent and take down an international sex trafficking ring. With Beckett fired from the CIA -- and outnumbered and outgunned -- he will need to recruit former allies Zero (Ryan Robbins), Lady Death (Sayaka Akimoto), and the Colonel (Dennis Haysbert) to even the odds. Although there's still plenty of action and espionage, Rogue Mission marks a shift in the franchise's formula and tone, leaning into a more playful, team-driven romp.
Collins recently spoke with CBR about Sniper: Rogue Mission. He dove into the franchise's longevity, Beckett's expertise, establishing this trio of agents, brutal stunts, and the next film.
RELATED: Day Shift's Steve Howey Details Becoming an Action Star
CBR: After starring in several Sniper films, what about this franchise and the character of Brandon Beckett keeps reeling you in?
Chad Michael Collins: The selfish answer is I am an actor, and I love to work. If they are kind enough to include me in another one, I jump at the chance. The professional interview answer is it's just a great opportunity to take a character and keep breathing life into it, keep adding a new layer. This is my sixth movie playing Brandon Beckett, and he has come a really long way since Sniper: Reloaded 10-plus years ago, where we saw him more as a baby-faced soldier, an infantry marine grunt on the frontlines. Now, we've seen him evolve as a world-class sniper, following in his father's footsteps. He has gone away from the military stuff and is more of a Special Ops fighter for good. He's focusing not even on [a] military mission, but as in this one, we touch on a sex trafficking ring and the dirty corruption that goes on at the highest level. It's almost about humanitarian efforts, which I think is a fun direction to take the franchise.
Brandon is at a different stage in his career. Where do we meet him at the beginning of this adventure?
Brandon has been lured to the CIA by an old friend, the Colonel, played by Dennis Haysbert, who is a high-ranking CIA official. Brandon throws in with the CIA, but you have to earn your way up. We see Brandon Beckett in the movie pushing paper. He's [confined] to a desk in his Windsor knot tie and suit. I think everybody can guess that doesn't go well. He's not meant to do reports and paperwork. He's out there to make a difference in the best way that he knows how which involves the long gun.
RELATED:
What does the title Sniper: Rogue Mission refer to? What takes Brandon off the grid?
Rogue Mission is an appropriate title not only for this movie, but I feel like it's a title that could have applied to a lot of other Sniper movies. We have long-established that Brandon is not afraid to go off script, to go a little cowboy and do what is right, no matter what the higher-ups say, no matter what the people above his pay grade or top brass have to say about it. He does that again. He gets himself fired from the CIA because he can't help but [do] the right thing for the right reasons.
Rogue Mission is pretty appropriate because we have now explored a team element in the Sniper franchise with Agent Zero and Lady Death. We are kind of a team of rogues, more or less, where we are not afraid to clandestinely do what's right and hide the paper trail in terms of not getting caught up in all the red tape and actually getting something done.
It feels very Suicide Squad.
Suicide Squad is a great reference, [or] A-Team if you grew up in the '80s, which is about a special heist team that has to do the dirty work, but also keep under the radar so [as] to not attract unwanted attention. It's nice because Brandon Beckett has always had people he's fought alongside, but they don't usually come back and help him again and again and again.
Rogue Mission's tone is different from previous installments. There's a playfulness to it. What were your thoughts on that shift when you read it in the script?
It's easy when you are watching a movie for everything to go smoothly and for everything to be perfect, especially when you are at the highest level of specialization, like an elite sniper. But I love that it's dirty. I can't imagine that anything goes exactly as planned in these high-level operations. It's not quite Benny Hill. It does rub a little dirt on it. These things are not clean. You have to improvise. You have to make judgment calls. There's obviously more of a buddy-cop feel to this movie and the banter back and forth. We crack jokes and take people down at the same time but still have each other's backs.
RELATED: Danny Trejo Cast as Ferdinand Magellan in Action Film 1521
Even the Western soundtrack leans into that.
Oliver Thompson -- he's our director on this one, and he wrote this one. I loved his vision for it. He's also musically talented. He had a lot to do with the music and score. I like how he merged a lot of the shots, setups, and choreography of the scenes with the music. I think that is so important. When I watched it for the first time, I could feel the influence of Samurai films. I could feel the influence of Westerns. I could feel the influence of even Tarantino, who does such an amazing job of merging beautiful shots with really unique music in almost every film he's ever done. It adds to the entertainment value in such a profound way. It's something we have never explored before.
There's still plenty of action in this sequel. Brandon takes a licking and keeps on ticking. What were some of the challenges in some of your fight sequences?
Every character in Sniper: Rogue Mission gets their chance to shine in the fight choreography. I have a face-off with Lady Death again, of course. She gave me a beating in the last movie. This time, it's a fight Brandon didn't want, and as much as I try to defuse the situation, Lady Death is stubborn and lethal. She comes at me in a brutal way. When we weren't filming on camera, we were off working with Hitz International, our wonderful stunt team, and trying to choreograph this and lock it down for the day. We all had doubles, but, of course, all the actors are gamers and were up to do as much of their own stunts as possible
Everybody throws themselves into these fight scenes. They are hard. They are tricky. They are tough to pull off. You have to take your licks and walk away with some cuts and bruises and some kicks that are supposed to miss but actually connect. That's part of the life, and it's really rewarding. It's an element of these movies and action films that I really enjoy. There's much more satisfaction in pulling off one of those scenes than there is in an emotional or dialogue scene because so much goes into that. They take so much more prep.
RELATED: REVIEW: Bullet Train Engineers a Fun, Overloaded Action Celebration
How much of that second rumble between Beckett and a bad guy took place on top of a shipping container?
We were on top of legit shipping containers, probably about two stories up. We had to climb a big ladder and do the fights on some uneven aluminum, which was tricky because the footing was not the best. It adds to a little bit of that grit, a little bit of that dirtiness, and a little bit of that sloppiness when trying to execute an in-your-face fight sequence. We had a blast. We had a chuckle when one of us would go down because of a misstep.
The movie ends with a bit of a tease regarding Brandon's future. What was the reaction to that development, and what would it mean for him in subsequent installments?
I think the vision for Sniper: Assassin'sEnd and Rogue Mission -- and then we are going to leave in September to shoot Sniper 10 -- was to have a trilogy within the franchise, to introduce and incorporate these new elements in terms of the team. If you watch until the end of the movie, our team gets a name, an acronym name. It's not the A-Team, spoiler alert. It's a really cool acronym. I love that everything has been leading up to the establishing of this team. You can probably imagine the team will be back together and alive and well in Sniper 10 when we go film this soon.
Sniper: Rogue Mission is now available on DVD, Digital, and Prime Video.
