Thomas Beckett



Master Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Beckett is the primary protagonist of the Sniper film saga from 1993 to 2014 and is portrayed in all main appearances by Tom Berenger.

He is a professional American marine and sniper. He claims to hail from Boseman, Montana and also resides in Texas. Beckett has 74 confirmed kills in the first movie. He later is seen killing 7, 9, 13 (eight as an adult, five in a flashback) and more in the first, second, third and fifth film respectively.

Sniper (1993)Edit Master Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Beckett, an experienced sniper, and his spotter Cpl. Doug Papich are on a mission to assassinate a Panamanian rebel leader in the jungle; however, they are extracted in daylight instead of night time, which results in Papich's getting killed by a sniper. Beckett runs back under fire to haul Papich's body to the helicopter. Later, Beckett is paired up with an inexperienced civilian, Richard Miller, to eliminate a rebel general financed by a Colombian drug lord. Miller is a SWAT sharpshooter, but he has no combat experience or confirmed kills. On the way to the staging area, Miller's chopper is attacked by a guerrilla, who kills several members of the crew. Miller is unable to take out the attacker; instead, the chopper's dying gunner makes the kill. The co-pilot believes Miller is responsible, and Miller earns a false reputation.

Beckett's insistence that they deviate from the mission plan and belief that Miller is unfit for command sparks friction. Early on, they encounter a group of Indians, who lead them past rebel guerrillas in return for a favor and a target of opportunity: to eliminate El Cirujano ("The Surgeon"), an ex-CIA torture expert who works with the rebels. Beckett agrees to do so. Not certain of Miller's reliability and skeptical about his "kill" aboard the helicopter, Beckett expects Miller to make the kill to prove himself. When it comes time, Miller fails again by making a "warning shot" before missing a head shot at Cirujano. The ensuing firefight with the alarmed guerrillas results in the death of one of the Indians. Although the Indians do not directly blame Beckett or Miller, they withdraw further help.

On their way to their target, Beckett and Miller realize they are being followed. They head to a village to contact their informant, a priest, only to find him already tortured and murdered. Beckett speculates out loud that it is the work of El Cirujano, calling into question Miller's credibility. That night, Beckett marks their track to bait the follower—the sniper that killed Papich—into a trap and uses Miller as a bait to pull the sniper out of hiding. While waiting for the targets to emerge at the general's hacienda, they discover Cirujano is still alive. Miller takes out the drug lord, but Beckett sacrifices his chance to take out the general when he saves Miller's life. Beckett insists that they return to kill the general, but Miller's refusal leads to an exchange of fire between the two that ends when Miller runs out of ammo. Miller subsequently has a mental breakdown.

As rebels close in on the two, Beckett attempts to provide covering fire for Miller. Seeing himself outnumbered, Beckett surrenders to the rebels. Knowing that Miller is watching, he stealthily releases a round while holding up his rifle. Miller grabs the bullet after Beckett is taken away. With night time approaching, Miller goes to the extraction site, but instead of boarding, he heads to the base camp, where he kills the general with his knife and finds Beckett being tortured by El Cirujano. Beckett spots Miller in the distance and uses a ploy to both distract Cirujano and mouth Miller instruction to kill both of them with one shot. Instead, Miller sticks to "one shot, one kill" and shoots Cirujano in the head. The two run to the helicopter for extraction, and Beckett once again saves Miller's life: using his offhand, he shoots an ambushing sniper. The final scene shows Beckett and Miller on the way back home.

Sniper 2 (2002)
Former U.S. Marine Corps scout sniper Thomas Beckett, who was discharged after his finger was amputated in the first film, is met by CIA officer James Eckles and Colonel David McKenna at his home. Despite losing his index finger he uses to shoot, Beckett still has the capability of firing a gun (as he uses his middle finger for the job). Considering this, along with his impressive career from his time in the Marine Corps, Beckett is given a mission to assassinate renegade Serbian General Mile Valstoria, who is responsible for conducting hit-and-run ethnic cleansing operations in Muslim-populated areas. The CIA fears that Valstoria's actions are threatening to inflame a larger conflict in the region. Beckett agrees to participate, but requests that an additional man, a spotter, must come with him. Beckett is introduced to his spotter, Jake Cole, an experienced U.S. Army sniper who is on death row for killing a federal officer who allegedly betrayed Cole's unit and had them killed during a mission. But Cole is released and offered to be pardoned if he takes part in the mission.

After being dropped off into Serbia, Beckett and Cole make their way to a Catholic basilica. There, they meet an underground resistance member named Sophia. Sophia takes them to her apartment, which is perched high above the designated area where Valstoria is due to show up, near a government building. The next morning, Beckett assassinates his target. Valstoria's killing puts the city into lockdown. After their original extraction point is compromised, Cole and Beckett are forced to find an alternative plan. When they hitch a ride on a public tram, nearby soldiers stop the vehicle and try to arrest them, but the two operatives take over the tram and ram it into some police cars. They soon exit the tram, running through the streets. Cole is captured and put into a prison where Valstoria's men keep their so-called 'special enemies', but Beckett is able to escape.

Beckett meets Sophia that night, and the two make a plan to rescue Cole. With the help of Sophia's brothers, Zoran and Vojislav, the next day they box in military trucks carrying Cole and a fellow prisoner to a prison where Cole was to be executed. They ambush the convoy and then help Cole and Pavel, who is a pacifist and political dissident, out of the truck and into a van that Zoran brought. Cole admits to Beckett that the assassination of Valstoria was set up to get Cole caught and then rescue Pavel from jail and brought out of Serbia. That night, at an abandoned factory that was meant to be the designated extraction zone, the group is ambushed by a tank and infantry. Both Vojislav and Zoran are killed in the attack and, after escaping from the factory through a sewer, Beckett orders Sophia to break off from the group and leave.

A distance away from the factory, Pavel insists that they should head to Komra, a Muslim town where a friend of Pavel's, Nauzad, lives. As the group meets Nauzad, he offers to help get the men to the border by getting them to a bus that would get them there. Within a couple of hours they are on their way but, as they cross a river, they come across an unexpected checkpoint and end up heading to Simand, the secondary extraction point, on foot. Meanwhile, Cpt. Marks inspects the bus that the three men just departed from and suspects that they are attempting to head to Simand. Marks orders a tracker to take his special forces unit to Simand.

As the three men arrive at Simand, they are ambushed by the special forces team in a forest outside of town, and Pavel suffers a slight flesh wound in the arm. After the trio kills the entire team, they are forced to proceed into town. The tracker holds up in the town factory and snipes down the team. Beckett demands that Cole take Pavel to the extraction zone while he deals with the tracker. Cole is severely wounded by the sniper, but Beckett picks him off. Pavel and Becket carry the wounded Cole into the helicopter and leave, just as Serb reinforcements led by Cpt. Marks arrive. In the helicopter, Beckett and Pavel look at Cole as he is badly wounded. Cole says, "Freedom!" and succumbs to his wounds.

Sniper 3 (2004)
Thomas Beckett is hired by NSA officials William Avery and Richard Addis to perform a covert operation to eliminate a suspected terrorist kingpin in the People's Republic of Vietnam who was providing support for Jemaah Islamiyah. The kingpin turns out to be a thought-dead friend and war-buddy of Beckett's, Paul Finnegan. Because he views the mission as a very personal one, Beckett demands that he conduct the mission alone, without a spotter.

The real purpose of the mission turns out to be something other than what Beckett was told. Beckett begins to suspect his employers' motives are not what they claimed after he is counter-sniped at after attempting to assassinate Finnegan. Beckett undertakes a mission of his own to get to the bottom of the mystery, involving escaping from capture by Vietnamese police, working with an NSA-recruited Vietnamese police operative Quan and using his military training to search for Finnegan. By and large the plot focuses on governmental betrayal and resultant feelings of disillusion.

Sniper 5: Legacy (2014)
A rogue gunman is assassinating high-ranking military officers one by one. When Gunnery Sgt. Brandon Beckett is informed his father, legendary shooter Thomas Beckett has been killed, Brandon springs into action to take out the perpetrator. But when his father rescues him from an ambush, Brandon realizes he's a pawn being played by his superiors to draw out the killer. It's up to the two men, bound by blood, to bring an end to the carnage.

Background Information and Notes

 * Beckett is assigned similar missions and while the first film makes mention of the John Rambo character, Beckett is primarily stealth-driven.
 * Ironically, the later films Beckett's in go the Rambo sequels' route by having far more explosive action and less stealth based scenarios and are filmed similarly to films such as the Die Hard, Mission: Impossible and the Jason Bourne films as well as TV shows such as 24 and The Unit.
 * Much like the characters Bryan Mills, John McClane, Jonas Blane and Jack Bauer, Thomas ends up having to fight alongside his offspring although this time, this son of his is rather invaluable and just as skilled as he is as opposed to arguably becoming a plot device unlike Kim Mills, Lucy McClane, Betsy Blane or Kim Bauer who often take awhile to adapt to their hostile environment or come off as annoying for the sake of being such.