Luis Llosa

Because there is no serpentine equivalent to the legit, era-defining masterpiece that is Jaws, I’ll propose Anaconda, in which Jon Voight promised that “the jungle can kill you in a thousand ways” and proceeded to illustrate several of them, as a Pretty Good Bad Movie, a creature feature with a good ratio of future stars (Jennifer Lopez, Owen Wilson) to slumming character actors (Ice Cube, Eric Stoltz, Danny Trejo) to pretensions (absolutely none), as the ideal model for The Meg. Whereas the post-Anaconda Snakes on a Plane, which tried, unsuccessfully, to transubstantiate its Badness into So-Good-It’s-Badness, would be a worst-case scenario.

The sniper has been portrayed in other films from Mark Wahlberg’s “Shooter” to Tom Berenger’s “Sniper” and “Sniper 2.” Chris Kyle was real and his story was told in his autobiography, “American Sniper,” adapted here by Jason Dean Hall, plus directed by Clint Eastwood.

The film has a carefree nature, much like Anaconda did in 1997.

Stiller, Owen Wilson and Christine Taylor ably carry much of the story load, assisted by some good supporting actors, headed by none other than Jon Voight ("Anaconda").