Shooter Release Date: March 23, 2007 Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Michael Pena, Danny Glover, Kate Mara, Rhona Mitra, Elias Koteas Directed by: Antoine Fuqua
The hero of this movie is named Bob Lee Swagger. That's a name to be reckoned with, provided you can pronounce it without breaking into a giggle fit. I mean, really. Bob. Lee. Swagger. Sounds like someone who used to give Goodman Beaver a hard time.
Fortunately for this project, everyone involved is a seasoned Hollywood professional. So on the occasions that the name "Bob Lee Swagger" has to be mentioned, in part or entirely, it is mentioned with the solemnity due an action thriller in which an embittered/enlightened ex-Marine — the Swagger in question, ably embodied by Mark Wahlberg — has his good nature taken advantage of by a group of nefarious high-level baddies and then has to blow all of said baddies to kingdom come against near-impossible odds.
The baddies — including an oily Danny Glover and a skittery Elias Koteas — frame Swagger for an "attempted presidential assassination" that takes out the baddies' real target, an Ethiopian archbishop who's fixing to blow the whistle on capitalist slaughter in his neck of the woods. Swagger's supposed to be killed in the confusion that follows, but he's too fast for the guys who set him up. He thrillingly escapes their grasp and finds shelter and help with the foxy widow of his old Marine partner (Mara, who does a wicked Jessica Simpson impersonation, although I'm not sure it's intentional). He then enlists a scapegoat FBI agent (Pena, doing a nice nebbish-to-no-prisoners-taking metamorphosis) to help him exact all manner of CGI-enhanced justice and revenge. This is one of those movies in which the explosions literally disintegrate the hero's enemies. Kick ass!
Stephen Hunter, the Pulitzer-Prize winning movie critic from whose novel Point of Impact (the first of three Swagger books) this picture was adapted, was praised by Publisher's Weekly for creating "a thinking man's Rambo." I haven't read Hunter's books, but I must say that I doubt if very many brains were overtaxed by this cinematic endeavor. Shooter's politics are weirdly schizoid — it uses far-right rhetoric and tropes (including enough gun talk to give NRA members spontaneous orgasms) in order to promote a thoroughly left-paranoid worldview. In this respect it's dopey bordering on offensive. But it does move along at a nice clip, and delivers exactly what belligerent action fans on both sides of the political aisle want — a wholly admirable figure blowing up a lot of bad shit. The only thing I missed, personally, was a final shot of Wahlberg, Mara, Pena and Mitra (the British one-time model, here playing Pena's in-house confidante) lounging in swimwear on the deck of a big sailboat, a la Trading Places. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go off and start outlining a series of action novels of my own, featuring a spanking new and exciting hero named Jimmy Earl Pumpiron.
