Shooter
Shooter is a good old-fashioned action flick, straight from Antoine Fuqua (Tears of the Sun, Training Day). Released in 2007, it stars Mark Wahlberg (The Departed, The Italian Job) as a former US Marine Corps scout sniper who has become disillusioned with the way things work in America. He left the Marines after a mission left his friend dead. A group leads him to believe they’re federal agents arrives at his home in the middle of nowhere several months later and try to tap the now reclusive sniper to entrap a potential assassin. Of course, this is the movies and nothing is what it seems, so sooner or later Wahlberg’s Bob Lee Swagger – yes that’s the character’s name – is framed for the attack (which is course isn’t what it seems either) and we’re off on a chase-and-hunt style thriller.
There is a lot of essential plot complexity involved in Shooter, but all of it is so ably and simply explained that it begins to look as though the world’s dullest light bulbs could easily figure it out. Wahlberg is relatively good as Swagger, the ex-sniper who relocates to the woods to live with his dog and his conspiracy theories. We find him after the mission gone wrong with the 9/11 Commission Report on his desk, looking through the day’s headlines. His character is very quickly established as one who doesn’t trust government and it’s not long after that revelation – moments later in fact – that Colonel Isaac Johnson (Danny Glover) and his crew come traipsing up the driveway to get Swagger’s help. Swagger, of course, obliges to help serve his country and we’re off.
The plot evolves and unravels quite quickly and we’re expected to believe that, once again, the FBI is a rather ridiculous agency that trips over its own feet and has so many incompetent agents in the field that one of them will always be just ripe for a comic brand of sidekick. Sure, it’s all in good fun, but this is a plot device that we’ve seen so often that it begins to get a bit much. FBI agent Nick Memphis (Michael Pena) is that character in Shooter and it isn’t long before he’s helping Swagger out on the road and helping prove his innocence. Pena does an admirable job, to his credit, and the character sways far enough away of the goofball sidekick standard that it almost works.
Swagger, in this type of prototypical action-thriller, will also obviously need a quasi-love interest. In this case, it’s the widow of his old buddy from the Marines, Sarah Fenn (Kate Mara). Fenn is a pretty cool character, even though she’s not given much to do but get abducted in a bra and sew Swagger’s wounds shut. I did like that the relationship between Swagger and Fenn only toyed with the romantic notion and didn’t cross over into it with a gaudy sex scene, although Mara was pretty hot so I can’t say I would have minded. Onwards and upwards, though!
The plot attempts to draw in some references to corruption here, much like other action films of this type do. In Shooter, it’s corruption from the top down and the feds are treated like some sort of independent force that can save the country if they only have the right information from a reclusive ex-Marine with phenomenal shooting skills. The plot composes a typology of American global policy here that involves the mowing down of a few African villages for pipelines. This plot is, of course, SO utterly ridiculous and would NEVER happen, but Wahlberg and his ability to saw down several heavily armed guards with the help of a rudimentary and incompetent errand boy from the FBI certainly gives it the nod of credibility it needed. Of course, the real mystery is finding the sarcasm in my previous statement…
Shooter is pretty much a more politically charged combination of the hit TV show 24 and First Blood with Wahlberg’s acting being a lot better than Stallone’s and the plot being slightly more intricate. It tries to be intelligent more than it actually is intelligent, but I’ll give it marks for trying to deliver a virtual paint-by-numbers corruption plot with a bit of flair and flourish. I guess I just wanted some more flourish and a more intelligent script that cut the obvious corners a little bit tighter and gave us more substance. Things blow up in Shooter and there are oodles of nice icky killings to work with, so there’s that.
All in all, the outcome of watching Shooter is essentially the same outcome of most other action films. It toyed with some rather intellectual elements, teased a philosophical and political point, blew stuff up, and gave us an attractive female to look at when there was too much talkin’ goin’ on. Pretty average stuff.
Trailer:
