Shooter
Rated: R
Runtime: 2 hours, 4 minutes
Directed by: Antoine Fuqua
Starring:
Mark Wahlberg - Bob Lee Swagger
Michael Peña - Nick Memphis
Danny Glover - Colonel Isaac Johnson
Kate Mara - Sarah Fenn
Elias Koteas - Jack Payne
Rhona Mitra - Alourdes Galindo
Ned Beatty - Senator Charles F. Meachum
This is a film that makes me ashamed to be a liberal. Not because it protests high gas prices and then drives around in an SUV or because it hates the Religious Right so much it decided to become atheist just to be contrary. No, I hate it because it wears the tinfoil conspiracy/tired talking point of liberals and then wants to fulfill the dark fantasy of being an NRA member and all the privileges that membership entails.
Bob Lee Swagger (played by Mark Wahlberg and winner of the Fakest Name Award) is a retired sniper who, while fed up with his country, still has enough patriotism left when a mysterious but official-looking man (Danny Glover) says there will be an attempt on the President’s life and only an expert sniper like Swagger can get inside the sniper’s head and prevent the assassination. This is where the film is at its best because it makes the effort to take us inside a sniper’s work. It lets us know that Swagger is the best at what he does and we can’t wait to see him do it.
Unfortunately, it’s a frame up, and after hiring the worst hitman in the world to take care of Swagger, our hero escapes with the entire country on his tail. It’s the second act that absolutely kills the film. Michael Peña plays a rookie FBI agent who gets his ass handed to him by a fleeing Swagger. But rather than be bitter, Peña is the only one who thinks it might not be as it seems (Why? Because Swagger said he didn’t shoot at the President! That's why!) The act slowly grinds to a halt as Swagger tries to heal from the botched attempt on his life with the help of his best friend’s widow, played by new hotness Kate Mara and Peña figures out what we already know: that Swagger is innocent.
Thankfully, the third act just figures “What the hell” and allows Swagger to be a badass sniper, but also makes Dick Cheney the main villain. Okay, that’s not totally true. Ned Beatty plays a corrupt Senator from Montana but if you were ever going to make a biopic about Cheney (and God help you if you were), you’d cast Ned Beatty. It’s uncanny how in every scene where Beatty holds a gun, you think he’s going to shoot an old man in the face. The film becomes more hilarious with every trite speech, every “twist” where we find out that the conservatives are even more evil than we thought, and Elias Koteas going from playing a regular henchman to the world’s craziest rapist. The undead take more time to crave the flesh of the living than for Koteas to become Insano-Rapist.
It’s somewhat amusing that a film like Shooter could only be made in a time when people feel completely betrayed by their government. You couldn’t make this film immediately following 9/11. You could only make it when all the goodwill and support garnered by 9/11 got completely squandered by the government. The film might note that irony if it wasn’t too busy sounding like a kid from Oberlin I almost punched in the throat.
Words by
Matt Goldberg
3.28.07