Movie Review (2): Shooter

By Anne Brodie Mar 25, 2007, 8:33 GMT

 “Shooter” is an action-packed thriller starring Mark Wahlberg as Bob Lee Swagger, a former Army sniper who leaves the military after a mission goes bad. After he is reluctantly pressed back into service, Swagger is double-crossed again. With two bullets in him and the subject of a nationwide manhunt, Swagger begins his revenge, which will take down the most powerful people in the country. Antoine Fuqua (“Training Day”) directs. ...more

Mark Wahlberg has always been popular - as a rapper, an aspiring actor or a serious actor, he has always rubbed people the right way. A certain forthrightness about him is comforting, you know he was a bad boy on the streets of South Boston, but you know he’s re-invented himself in ways few of us could imagine.

You just get the feeling you’re in safe hands with this well-muscled and staunchly family values guy is around. You know anyone who messes with you will have to answer to Mark.

He’s good looking. He takes care of himself and has shown off various impressive parts of his body in the Calvin Klein tighty whitey ads, shirtless in films and well, pants-less as Dirk Diggler. Yes, he’s a dreamy old-fashioned beefcake.

That old-fashioned quality and his athletic prowess make him the perfect candidate to star in ‘Shooter,’ a tense dramatic thriller that makes good use of his image.  The look is old fashioned, and so is the presentation. 

He recalls heroes of an earlier time, without the special effects and computer imaging, strictly through training, training and extreme focus.

He plays a US military sniper scout. We learn a lot about the skill required to kill a coke can from a thousand feet. As we learn in dialogue, a sniper requires takes mathematical skill, meteorology knowledge, because humidity, wind, temperature and conditions play a key role in the accuracy of a bullet, stone cold focus and practice.

Wahlberg went to sniper school and apparently got pretty good at it.

He is Bob Lee Swagger, a sharpshooter who lives in the Montana mountains, in a place so remote that no roads go there. But he’s surprised by black suited G-men who need his services. Someone’s out to assassinate the president and only he can figure out where and how. He reluctantly agrees to do so, and thus signs a deal with the devil.

He becomes the hunted. It’s a set-up.

It’s not Shakespeare but it’s good rollicking fun.

Swagger is MacGyver crossed with The Fugitive, he moves fast, a hair ahead of the G-men, and he can make things blow up real good after a quick trip to the convenience store.

It’s unlikely, unbelievable and hard to swallow. Yet it’s intensely fun!

The big bangs make the theatre floor shake – and Swagger’s not done yet.

Remember napalm?  It’s back.

A strong anti-government flavor casts doubt on the electoral process, politicians and the justice system. 

But that’s nothing new. Such mistrust has been such an important part of filmmaking during the current administration that the public may be beyond it one to the next thing. So 2005.

I would like to stress once again how much fun it is to be there as Swagger lays traps, outwits, outsmarts and outplays the bad guys and fat politicos.

I like to think there are handsome muscle men out there with wit and training to save the world from evildoers. The fifties had Superman, why can’t we have at least a sniper on our side?

Shooter
35mm action thriller
Directed by Antoine Fuqua
Written by Stephen Hunter and Jonathan Lemkin
Runtime: 92 minutes

Opens wide USA March 23. MPAA: Rated R for strong graphic violence and some language.