Shooter (Review)

Swagger; master of concealment.

Shooter wins bonus points through its originality… kind of.

By steadfastly adhering to 80s action movie clichés and sticking to formula it somehow manages to appear as a refreshing alternative to anything made in a long while. That’s because it’s been a long while since there has been a decent straightforward ‘screwed over man against the world’ film in the same vein as Commando, First Blood and Hard to Kill, y’know, big dumb guy flicks, and while Shooter is hardly that dumb, consider this summary;

Bob Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg) is a crack US sniper, sold out and left for dead deep behind enemy lines. Swagger apparently spent the three years following his miraculous escape growing a ponytail and teaching a dog to fetch him beers, all while remaining off the grid.

Then he is approached out of the blue by US government intelligence types, types who need help in foiling a possible sniper attack on the President of the United States. They logically feel that to think like a sniper it helps to be one, so they ask Swagger how he would plan his mission if he were to want to assassinate the leader of the free world.

After an exhaustive process Swagger selects his assault site, pinpoints his shooting vantage point and even considers his escape routes. Then, before he gets the chance to foil any attack he finds himself leaking vital plasma and hunted mercilessly by the very people who only days earlier commissioned his services.

As the adage says ‘fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice’ however…

But Swagger is far from sheepish, he’s pissed. Framed, hunted and on the run, he turns to the wife of his former sniping buddy who was not lucky enough to escape the disaster in Africa. She proves a loyal ally and safe haven in these desperate hours when no-one else would believe Swagger. She also has an amazing rack and a decision making process that has her disrobing frequently…

From these deliberate beginnings Shooter’s second hour is positively Schwarzenegger-esque, Stallonian, Van Damme-good stuff.

Start with a shafted-over and highly trained killing machine capable of almost anything, add some evil politicians and government high-ups, a hot widow, an honest cop who knows the truth, a Russian enemy sniper – even a reclusive genius – coat with a dense and convoluted cover-up and you have the recipe for all sorts of unnecessary violence.

Swagger finally gets his swagger-on in a scene where he lays waste to no less than 30 crack soldiers in an especially ambush-able farmhouse, with a series of explosions that the A Team would undoubtedly approve of and a shot-to-kill ratio that would be the envy of any hardcore gamer.

At a tick over two hours Shooter outstays its welcome just a little, with at least 3 or 4 scenes beyond the film being for all intents and purposes done. It is too slow in the first hour and has a few peripheral characters that frankly weren’t necessary. Despite these things and other flaws I still liked it for the most part.

Just as quality hip-hop is quite rare on the ground these days among the glut of vocoded, overproduced, hook-heavy teenage friendly crap, so are good old simple action flicks. So when a decent old-schoolish track or straightforward shoot ’em up comes along  is easy to embrace even if it isn’t as good as some of the classics.

Shooter is that throwback, an old school action film floating on a sea of uber-commercial talking robot, superhero and semi-animated crap, where a decent soldier is pitted against the odds with more than enough reason to kill.

Final Rating – 7 / 10. Wahlberg takes the one action script that Jason Statham mustn’t have seen in the last ten years. It might not be great, but it’s good enough these days.

About OGR

While I try to throw a joke or two into proceedings when I can all of the opinions presented in my reviews are genuine. I don't expect that all will agree with my thoughts at all times nor would it be any fun if you did, so don't be shy in telling me where you think I went wrong... and hopefully if you think I got it right for once. Don't be shy, half the fun is in the conversation after the movie.
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