Shooter

Shooter stars Mark Wahlberg (who just appeared in The Departed), who is on screen 90% of the time, and the movie was directed by Antoine Fuqua. Fuqua was the director of Tears of the Sun and Training Day as well as the earlier The Replacement Killers. I liked Training Day quite a lot, but I was not a huge fan of Tears of the Sun because it felt like it had a formula type script made up of bits and pieces of other movies.

The plot concerns a marksman, Wahlberg, that is no longer in the service, and is called backed to help foil a plot to kill the president. Wahlberg does a good job of stringing us along, and if you want to see a lot of shooting and explosions, be my guess, but the script leaves you wanting more. The movie loses steam towards the end mostly do through the script. There are just so many coincidences you can take without rolling your eyes and there are points where what the actions that characters take just do not ring true. The movie ultimately disappoints us. Out of four stars this would be a typical two star movie. By far the most interesting part of the movie, beside Wahlberg's acting and Kate Mara's eyes, is the part detailing what it takes to make a very long shot (and I don't know anything about this subject so it might have been total BS and I would not know it). There is also a great cameo in the movie by Levon Helm who is as spunky as ever, though graying around the edges a bit. Levon's verbal sparring with Wahlberg may be the highpoint of the movie. I really didn't like the casting of Ned Beatty as a corrupt senator, just because it seemed a little too easy. Overall the acting is good, and the movie has a good cast with Danny Glover as a heavy and Michael Pena as a FBI agent caught in the middle. Also if you are looking for a movie that has it's moral compass on straight this is probably not the movie for you, though the movie does takes some not-particularly-sharp jabs at the Bush administration. From this movie you would think every government official is corrupt, which is a bet of a stretch. Instead of the whole government if they had just stuck with the White House, well then that would have been another matter!! I do think the movie takes the credibility that we want to give it, and stretches it a little bit past the breaking point.

You can write James Harper at movielover77061@yahoo.com