AT THE MOVIES WITH DILLON KIMMEL
After an undercover military mission in Africa goes horribly wrong, leading to the death of snider expert Bob Lee Swagger’s (Mark Wahlberg) spotter and best friend, the dejected, guilt-ridden man flees his post and escapes to America. Resentful and bitter towards the government that left him to die in Africa, Swagger finds solace and peace in the mountains of Wyoming for 36 months, until, inevitably, the CIA boys come knocking.
Col. Isaac Johnson (Danny Glover) bluntly requests Swagger plan an attempt on the President’s life, not to carry it out, but to stop the actual assassination from taking place, which Johnson claims is imminent. Imploring his expert skills in long-range ballistics, Swagger stakes out the area where the President is scheduled to speak and plans a brilliant counterattack to the assassination. Too bad Swagger isn’t trained to notice when he’s being set up.
The good guy is rewarded for his efforts with two bullets in the back and the full force of the U.S. military hunting him down—oh yeah, and the assassination attempt “misses its mark” and instead takes out some African king who must have really ticked somebody off.
With blood seeping from his fresh wounds, Swagger somehow manages to commandeer a truck and drive from Philadelphia to Kentucky, where he enlists the help of his friend’s widow in performing impromptu surgery on him in her house to keep him alive (we’re spared the on-screen details).
After he’s recovered, it’s time for revenge. As Swagger so prophetically puts it, “I’m gonna burn their playhouse down.” Prepare to suspend your disbelief—a lot.
Shooter is easily the angriest, most antisocial movie I have seen this year, with nearly every moment devoted to revenge in the most extreme of ways. Forget stealing their identity. Forget kidnapping their families. Just shoot ’em in the head and don’t think another moment about it. Thank God Shooter garnished a ‘R’ rating (of which it easily deserved). Our 13-year-olds don’t need anybody else telling them to take justice into their own hands—Spider Man already does that for them.
The film’s lack of a credible script or logic of any sort is terribly debilitating to the flow of the film. For example, the overall premise of the film is reliant on the fact that a standing U.S. Senator (Ned Beatty) ordered the massacre of 300 African villagers in order to more easily run oil pipelines through the countryside. Remember suspend your disbelief.
At times, it tries to be a deep, espionage-like thriller, failing mostly. But most of the time Shooter is just a mindless, run-and-gun testosterone fest, which is fine if the film wasn’t so hell-bent on making the government look as conniving and deceitful as it possibly can. Frankly, I am tired of going to the movies and being forced to endure how bad Hollywood thinks this country is and how all of our problems are directly due to the evil C-word, capitalism. This coming from the same people who think it’s trendy to go to rehab.
Another disturbing facet of Shooter stems from a seemingly harmless 15-second scene, in which Swagger anesthetizes himself by inhaling the fumes of a pressurized can of Miracle Whip. It will be a miracle in itself if this crude form of huffing isn’t repeated by a gaggle of curious middle schoolers. Just another way Hollywood is frying the minds of our kids, quite literally.
Shooter isn’t all mush, but it’s close. The character performances are decent, the exotic locales stunning, and the guns big and very effective. For about 45 minutes, the film has potential, but then the filmmakers just have to flippantly turn the tables and do their best to stir up paranoia and dissension among Americans who are just waiting to rage against the machine. To quote John Stossel, “Give me a break.”
2 stars.
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