by Chris Alexion, Copyright May 08, 2007, all rights reserved. 339 views
Given director Antoine Fuqua's brilliant Training Day, you'd expect his latest film Shooter at least to compare. Yet Shooter largely misses the target–it's not so much a thoughtful thriller as an action movie packaged as one.
The film stars Mark Wahlberg as Bob Lee Swagger, an expert Marine sniper who renounces the military after he and his best friend are left behind on a mission that ends up costing the latter his life. Three years later, a bitter Wahlberg is recruited by Danny Glover to prevent a presidential assassination attempt. Glover wants him to plan the perfect long-range sniper attack so that they can (purportedly) prevent it from happening. In true torn-between-grudge-and-duty fashion, Wahlberg predictably agrees, scoping out D.C., Baltimore, and Philadelphia from the perspective of a sniper and settling on Philadelphia as the only city in which a shot from beyond a mile could be successful.
But when the operation goes horribly wrong, Wahlberg realizes that he's been played. Glover's group wanted to use his skills to plan the attempt themselves and leave him holding the bag. Wahlberg then has to go on the run from every law enforcement agency in the country to find out what's going on. With the help of his friend's widow (Kate Mara) and an unlikely FBI ally (Michael Pena), Wahlberg takes the offensive, gunning for the men who framed him and the secret they hold.
The basic premise is decent, though it smells a bit too much like The Sentinel. But apart from Wahlberg–a top-notch actor who's one of the few good things in Shooter–the acting is so poorly done that we don't even care. And Glover puts so little verve into his villain that we wonder whether he does either. The awkward dialogue doesn't help, landing somewhere between attempts at wit and half-finished musings on patriotism. One such tongue twister: "There's always some poor deluded soul that believes one man can make a difference, and you have to kill him to convince him otherwise. That's the hassle of democracy." Huh? Also puzzling is the film's plot, which twists and turns with all the purpose and finesse of a lawn tractor on ice. By the end, you just learn to accept the story and not to ask questions.
But Fuqua is too good a director to leave us utterly empty-handed. The camera work is superb, as are the scenes in which Wahlberg can really cut loose. The first of these scenes is Wahlberg's escape from Philadelphia after the shooting. Wahlberg outruns the Philly PD and the FBI, driving his stolen FBI vehicle into the Delaware River. Fuqua also nails a later scene in which Wahlberg and Pena attack a heavily-guarded house, brandishing sniper rifles, pipe bombs, and napalm. And despite the bad dialogue, a few good lines emerge, such as when Pena points out to an FBI coworker that they're not that good at their job. "We do work for the federal government…." Also ironic is the comment of an old-timer Tennessee gunsmith Wahlberg consults. When the old-timer mentions that "they say" the attempt on the president was made by Bob Lee Swagger, he adds that of course "they also said WMDs was in Iraq."
In the end, though, Shooter is problematic philosophically. [Spoiler warning.] When Wahlberg is eventually exonerated in a special meeting with the Attorney-General, Glover goes free because his crimes were committed outside US jurisdiction. The A-G laments that this country isn't the Old West. You can't clean up the streets with a gun, however much it's needed. Wahlberg silently agrees, and in the next scene proceeds to shoot up his enemies in cold blood, laying down Bob Lee Swagger-style street justice.
The problem is that this isn't justice, and it isn't what Fuqua defended in Training Day. Training Day made the point that law is crucial, and no one is above the law–especially the government. When Hawke tells Denzel in one scene that Denzel just committed murder and armed robbery, he shows that he grasps this point, even though Denzel justifies his actions with his own bizarre logic. Street justice is essentially about revenge. Though rationalized by complex arguments, it ultimately hurts the cause of true justice.
Tyranny, after all, doesn't come from the state alone.
1 • Nathaniel Bluedorn • May 17, 2007 • 4:27 PM
I totally agree with you on this review.