Martin (John Amplas), a young man who looks around 20-years-old, boards a train in Indianapolis, Indiana for New York. At night, he breaks into a sleeping car and sedates a woman with a syringe full of narcotics. She struggles, but he tells her not to struggle or be upset because she wont feel pain. After a few minutes, the woman falls asleep, and Martin has sex with the unconscious woman. Afterwards, he slices her wrists with a razor blade so he can drink her blood. The woman bleeds to death in her sleep.
In the morning, the train stops in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where Martin disembarks. He is met by Tata Cuda (Lincoln Maazel) an elderly and hostile old man who claims to be his cousin from the Old World. Together, they travel by another train to the town of Braddock, a dying industrial suburb. They walk to Cuda's large house where he shows Martin his living quarters. Cuda then accuses Martin of being an 84-year-old vampire from his old country. He has taken in Martin because he is family, but tells him, "First I will save your soul. Then I shall destroy you." Martin denies being a vampire and implies that Cuda is merely his uncle rather than his cousin. Cuda then puts up strings of garlic on the doors to his and his granddaughter's room, and then holds up a small cross when Martin approaches him. Martin takes away the cross, and even takes a bite of the garlic mocking these attempts by saying bitterly, "There's no real magic... ever". Cuda tells Martin that he can come and go as he pleases. But he also warns Martin that he will kill him if he kills anyone in Braddock. He also tells Martin to stay away from his granddaughter Christine (Christine Forrest), whom arrives home from her job that evening.
Cuda introduces Christine to Martin, but also warns her to stay away from him. But Christine instead strikes up a friendship with Martin who confides in her about his vampire heritage. When Cuda later confirms Martin's claims to be a vampire, Christine, not surprisingly, refuses to believe either one. She thinks that Cuda and the other members of her family have driven Martin to insanity by making him think that he is a vampire. It is never revealed if Martin really is a vampire, or just a shy and lonely youth with troubled issues. Christine is the only person that Martin gets the courage to talk to. When Christine's boyfriend Arthur (Tom Savini) arrives at the house for dinner, Martin stops talking and backs away despite Arthur's attempt at a conversation. Christine later confides in Martin that she hopes to leave Braddock someday with Arthur, even though Martin points out that Arthur treats her badly and is both verbally and physically abusive towards her.
When Christine sees that Martin won't talk to anyone else, she buys him a phone which he installs in his room. Martin begins to repeatingly call a radio talk show where he describes what it's like to be a vampire. He becomes known on the radio as "the Count" to all the listeners. But the patronizing host (Michael Gornick) thinks he's just crazy.
Martin gets a job at Cuda's grocery store of stocking shelves, hauling boxes around, and even gets to be a delivery boy for some of the customers. One of his customers is a certain Abby Santini (Elyane Nadeau), who becomes taken in with Martin. She is a very friendly young woman who is depressed when she tells Martin that her husband is unfaithful. But Martin still does not have the nerve to talk with her, so she is happy to have someone to confide in with her life problems. Martin phones the radio show host to describe his infatuation with the housewife and senses that she wants to have sex with him. When the radio show host asks Martin if it is a sexual problem that he has involving women criticizing him during sex, Martin replies that he has never had sex with a woman who was awake.
One day, Martin travels by train to outside Braddock to look for victims. At a supermarket, he follows a young woman (Sarah Venable) home to her posh suburban house. He sees the woman's husband (Richard Rubenstein) leave for a long business trip, and Martin decides this would be the right time for more feeding. Martin returns to the house after dark and breaks in through the garage door. But it is Martin who gets the surprise when he bursts into her bedroom to find her in bed with her adulterous lover Lewis (Al Levitsky). After a vicious struggle, Martin jabs both of them with hyprodermic needles with narcotics, and waits for the drugs to take affect. He drags the unconscious body of Lewis from the house to a clump of trees across the street where he kills him by shoving a broken tree branch into his neck and drinks his blood. Martin returns to the house where he has sex with the unconscious woman. But out of compassion and pity, he decides to let her live.
Martin begins to have romantic monochrome visions of his vampire past (real or imagined), where he drained blood from a young woman and was chased through the streets of a nameless European town by a torch-lit mob.
During one Sunday at church, Cuda brings home Father Howard (George A. Romero) who asks him about the possibility of exorcism and demon possession. Father Howard calls upon the elderly Father Zulemans (Clifford Forrest, Jr.) over at Cuda's request. Together, Cuda and Zulemans confront Martin his bedroom and attempt to perform an exorcism on him. At this point, Martin remembers (another real or imaginary flashback), in the Old Country of people trying to perform an exorcism on him, and he flees them. Martin then flees from Cuda and Zuelmas as well. A little later that night, Martin terrorizes Cuda in a children's playground when he puts on a Dracula cape and puts false fangs into his mouth to pretend that he really is a vampire.
One day, Martin finally musters the courage to talk with Mrs. Santini during a routine delivery to her house where he tells her that he's aware of her attempts to seduce him and wants now to have sex with her. After having sex for the first time, Mrs. Santini becomes more depressed for she tells Martin that her husband just left her because she discovered that she cannot bear children, and that her desires towards him are based on sex and nothing else. But Martin wants to stay with her and help her move on with her life. Martin tells the radio show host about his affair with the housewife and that he no longer has the urge to attack other women.
Meanwhile, Arthur meets with Cuda and tells him that he wants Christine to leave town with him so they can get married and start a family. But Christine becomes angry at Cuda when he tells Arthur that insanity runs in their family and he shouldn't consider having children with her. Shortly afterwards, Christine packs up and leaves Braddock for New York with Arthur despite Martin telling her that Arthur is abusive towards her. But her mind is made up. Before leaving, Christine tells Martin that she really has no ill feelings towards him and just wants to make a fresh start with her life. She says goodbye to him and promises to write. But Martin knows that with an abusive and possessive man in Christine's life, she probably won't.
Depressed over losing his one true friend, Martin phones the radio show host and tells him that he's getting "shaky" and wants to go out looking for more victims. That night, Martin travels to a rough crime-ridden area of Pittsburgh and attacks two derelicts in a alley, injecting them with narcotics. He kills one of them by silting the bum's wrist and drinking his blood. Martin is about to kill the second one when a police car shows up and gives chase. Martin narrowly escapes during a long chase on foot which leads from the garbage strew streets and through a local store. Martin runs into an old warehouse where a drug deal is going down. A shootout between the two cops and the three thugs begins where all of them are killed, leaving Martin as the sole survivor who casually walks away from the carnage.
One day, Martin finds Mrs. Santini dead in her bathtub, after she had slit her writs with a razor blade. Martin anonymously calls the police to report the body and leaves. He phones the radio show host one final time to say that he really doesn't need friends or people to talk to for he is his own person. But when Cuda learns about Mrs. Santini's suicide, is mistakenly thinks Martin killed her and made it look like a suicide as he's done before. Cuda walks into Martin's room while he is asleep and kills him by hammering a wooden stake through Martin's heart.
Cuda buries Martin's body in his back garden, while over the closing credits various voices from people are heard talking to the radio show host asking the whereabouts of "the Count".
6.2/10 三一律+条件悬差的对阻戏，大俯拍+各景别镜头的代入感，这是优点。神化的子弹时间、煽情、工具化的配角以及结尾剧情的崩坏，这是缺点。这片子大的框架像是老谋子已经搭建好，女儿只管执行没有太多私人的毕业作。
喜欢小哭包，人可以掉眼泪，但要有能力和魄力。
白天：春节档狗都不看 晚上：行吧爸爸 扣分原因：个人不喜欢战争片，但也知道所有战争片的内核都是反思、反战，而不是全然煽情化的爱国主义教育。看不到任何关于战争的反思、把战争游戏化、技术化，把敌人脸谱化、扭曲化，以及最重要的：爆头断肢妥妥R级，什么时候电影分级？？
水门桥浓烈煽情后续乏力的迹象愈发明显。
强设定，硬转折，满配乐，廉价的子弹时间，为煽而煽的做作，同为狙击手电影对标一下兵临城下你就知道哪个在天上哪个在地下了
在战争或者和平的年代，总有人接过前辈的旗帜又成了他的模样，都值得铭记的英雄。
张艺谋的高产令人佩服，战争太残酷，致敬志愿军战士们。
小切口视角战争，老谋子还是很高明的，没有大场面不煽情却把大小格局都抓稳了。个人成长+战争关键在不到100分钟里都展现完整了，一对比，同期的长津湖真的不行。
以小见大的叙事手法，我还可以跟老谋子继续学习！
和我上一部春节档《四海》有着非常鲜明的区别，叙事从始至终起码都在发挥作用、主线清晰明了，是野路子出身的韩寒根本无法比拟的。
虽然说这个故事设定未免牵强，但好在用较短的篇幅只聚焦在一场战斗，对于故事节奏来说是非常紧凑的。然而让人摸不着头脑的地方也随处可见，狙击手团体对决总是有些江湖决斗之感，身为狙击班的五班遭遇伏击还慌乱救人送人头，班长毅然决然抱着手榴弹赴死，美军上尉打黑枪又不派人。只能说影片整体很完整，细节很难堪。
剧情如美国兵的中文一样简洁有力，韩红的片尾曲很好听，歌词也很棒，如片片雪花一样晶莹~
22.03 开门见山，干净利落；化繁为简，以小见大；层层推进，曲折起伏；延续传承，精神永存…PS：国师现在格外喜欢传承这个概念啊…PPS：同场观影人观影素质不错，印象里难得所有人听完片尾曲看完字幕才离场
以正出，以奇胜，国师的长处。拍得简单，纯粹，仿佛闲庭信步。看国师这两年的作品，这种挥洒自如越发明显。但也能感受到主题表现上的克制，甚至犹豫，这就是时代需要思考的问题，对比冬奥开幕感觉更明显，全社会在呼唤新时代的核心美学。
他们说这是春节几部中最好看的一部了，嗯，不愧是春节档
建议所有执着于拍3个小时的导演们都学学怎么在96分钟里讲完这么完整的故事，影片本身水准还是很高的，国师拍出了属于他的冷枪热血。
依旧随意吊打一众华人导演。审美这个东西真是一辈子的事，国师的美学理念已经成功超越时代了
该片在朝战历史的表述上采用了极为自信的态度，中国跟美国在朝鲜打架，却跟朝鲜无关，朝鲜只是那个邋遢贫穷丑陋的小屁孩，他想帮助中国（亮亮）却啥也做不成，最后自己被抓起来纯粹是惹祸，给他擦屁股的还是志愿军，咩有为社会主义阵营牺牲的老套煽情了。
个人张艺谋十年最佳。煽情稍微有点狠，但最终基本上都起效果了。
以小见大的视角，非常考验导演功底。节奏的把控亦是，故事情节固然模式化，在有限的框架里填充厚实的内容，用细节来丰富这个框架，聚焦狙击手这个独特的角色，让戏中每个演员都充满个性魅力，最后高燃的结尾亦让人感动，张艺谋导演类型片这张卷子依然答的漂亮。
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