Let’s say you’re a fan of Greek Mythology or something, and you know they have all of these wacky gods, right?  The Sun god, the goddess of beauty, the God of the sea and so on and so forth.  Well if there was a god of shooting a gun, then that guy would be Bob Lee Swagger.  For real.  Bob Lee could, if he so chose, shoot your eyelashes off from two miles away, into tornado winds while standing in a boat being rocked by hurricane waters.  He could do that.  There are now THREE certainties in life after death and taxes, with the third being Bob Lee could shoot you dead if he wanted to.  The gubment trained Bob Lee quite well in the art of marksmanship.  And it would seem that they put all of their cash in training Bob Lee, and ONLY Bob Lee as he seems to be the only person in the entertaining, but completely ridiculous film ‘Shooter’ who can shoot at ANYTHING and connect. 

Mark Wahlberg is the aforementioned Bob Lee Swagger who we first meet in the hills of Ethiopia providing long range protection, along with his best friend and partner Donnie (Lane Garrison), to coalition convoys.  Now when Donnie pulls out the tattered photo of his lovely wife Sarah to show to Bob Lee, while professing eternal love to the woman, we pretty much know what’s in store for Donnie now don’t we.  First we get to witness an impressive demonstration of Bob Lee’s marksmanship skills, and then everything goes straight to hell.  Donnie tries to call in an evacuation, but the powers that be, being as how we aren’t even supposed to be there in the first place, decide to cut and run, leaving Bob Lee and Donnie stranded.  Bob Lee manages to get out, Donnie doesn’t.

Some years later, Bob Lee has lost his love for the gatdam gubment and now lives off in the hills with his dog, growing his own veggies and hunting his own meat.  He gets a surprise visit from the mysterious Colonel Isaac Johnson (Danny Glover) who claims that there is a plot to kill the president, and it’s going to be done from long range.  Col. Johnson needs Bob Lee, considering his prodigious skills, to scout the possible locations, and flesh out how he would handle the assassination, thus allowing this mysterious government agency to flush out the assassin.  Bob Lee resists at first, but Col. Johnson plays the patriot trump card and soon Bob Lee is on board.  It’s a setup of course, and Bob Lee barely escapes with his life after the assassination attempt.  During his escape, he disables green horn FBI agent Nick Memphis (Michael Pena) in the process, who will serve as the only person in the nation who thinks the pennies don’t add up to a dollar in the alleged assassination attempt and become Bob Lee’s ally.  Will Bob Lee find out how deep the rabbit hole goes?  We will watch and see.

Now I’m about as disillusioned with the present state of our government as much as anybody, but if you accept the theories that are passed along in ‘Shooter’ as fact, then you might as well grab your 12-gage, head on up to north Michigan and prepare for eternal war with these jack booted thugs we done put in office.  But it’s just a movie, right?  And as a movie, ‘Shooter’ has enough political intrigue, devastating head shots, explosions and car chases for three movies.  Director Antoine Fuqua is quite skilled at his profession and shoots action, and stages scenes about as well as any director, but it doesn’t seem that he has received a project that measures up to his apparent talent, and ‘Shooter’ is no exception.  ‘Shooter’ isn’t a bad film by any means but it careens all over the place with a narrative that starts out as intriguing but ends up completely ludicrous, complete with characters who explain everything out to us in minute detail, for no other reason than they simply have to. 

All of the actors are fine in their roles, beginning with Mark Wahlberg who is quite believable as the hard ass, disillusioned sniper, and Michael Pena also fares well as the earnest FBI rookie.  Though most of us are most familiar with Danny Glover as sidekick Roger Murtaugh from the ‘Lethal Weapon’ series don’t forget he’s played some fairly hideous bad guys such as the dirty cop in ‘Witness’ some years back and lest we forget his abusive turn in ‘The Color Purple’, so Mr. Glover can do evil, and he does it here just fine.  The problem I believe that occurs with ‘Shooter’, and many films are guilty of this, is that after Bob Lee’s initial brush with danger, he essentially becomes an invincible God-like character who can’t be harmed.  Bob Lee can shoot you while on a rocking boat, but other highly trained military commandos can seem to hit HIM while he’s running across an open field with their feet firmly planted on the ground.  As such, you never get a feeling that he is any danger, despite the 80 or so soldiers shooting at him, and thus the tension levels never rise above lukewarm.

The ending sequence also left much to be desired, reeking of a test audience re-shoot as opposed to what was probably left as a more open ended conclusion originally.  Oh well, we must have complete closure here in the U.S. of A.  Regardless, ‘Shooter’ is still fairly entertaining, and it’s never boring though it’s probably more fantastical than say ‘Lord of the Rings’.  Enjoy, but you may want to take a grain of salt with you to the theater with you.

Buds Second:  As Chris notes in his review, we are now up to three certainties in life... death, taxes, and that Bob Lee Swagger could kill you if he wanted to.  Oh, and add in another certainty: the most mediocre actioner is far more enjoyable to watch than even the best romantic comedy!  So let's step back for just a minute:  we know that Shooter is definitely not a romantic comedy, so we've got that going for us (which is nice). However, we now know that Shooter is basically a mediocre actioner ... nothing wrong with that.  So what's up with Shooter? Well, if you take the Matt Damon character from the Bourne Identity / Supremacy movies, and tweak him a little to match his skill sets Tom Beringer character from the Sniper movies, you get MarkyMark's Swagger character.  Add a cynical conspiracy-thriller plot line, and you get Shooter.

It's not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination ... there was little-to-no character development, none of the characters was believable (in my opinion), and the bad guys were so absurdly bad that they seemed to trip over themselves to show how bad they are.  The storyline was preposterous as well.

But the action pretty much rocked, and in my eyes, more than made up  for the other short-comings. And while the plot was lacking, the directing and film-making was very good.  

So was Shooter a good movie?  It would probably be a stretch to say "yes" to that question.  But did I enjoy watching it?  You know I did.