I've seen many movies just like Shooter, and many of them have been made a lot better. There's absolutely no reason why this movie needed to be made, and director Antoine Fuque (Tears of the Sun) keeps on reminding us of this as each scene falls flat right before our eyes. Completely lacking emotion or anything remotely memorable, the movie simply unfolds before our eyes without making the slightest impression. You've heard of an Event Movie? Well, what we have here is an Uneventful Movie.

Bob Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg) is a former Marine sniper who left the Corps after a botched mission overseas led to the death of his fellow soldier and best friend. Now living in isolation in Wyoming, he is eventually tracked down by Colonel Isaac Johnson (Danny Glover) who wants Bob's help in trying to thwart an assassination sniper attempt on the life of the President that's supposedly coming up in a few weeks. Bob is lured back into duty with Isaac's patriotic words, but discovers all too late that the entire thing is a set up intended to eliminate the Ethiopian Archbishop who is also speaking at the President's event. Bob is blamed for the murder, just as Isaac and the other corrupt officials involved, and now finds himself on the run. His only allies in attempting to uncover the truth is a rookie FBI agent named Nick (Michael Pena), who thinks Bob is innocent because the official story on the news doesn't match the evidence at the supposed scene of the assassination, and the girlfriend of Bob's fallen Marine friend, Sarah (Kate Mara). With a corrupt politician (Ned Beatty) and the entire police force after him, Bob decides that if he wants to stay alive and clear his name, he'll have to use his military skills in order to extract revenge.

Shooter is based on a novel called "Point of Impact", which was written by Stephen Hunter, who just happens to be the film critic for Washington Post. If Mr. Hunter were to review the film based on his book, he'd probably be able to point out the numerous ways in which this film goes wrong. What starts as a possibly intriguing political thriller quickly degenerates into a dragged out chase that goes on for way too long, and then further dumbs itself down into an overly violent and completely implausible revenge fantasy where one man takes out entire government forces pursuing him, and does so with very little damage or consequences to himself. This is a dumb, gaudy action spectacle at heart, but it doesn't have the sense to have any fun with its own premise. There is no thrill to the action sequences, they are as standard and as pedestrian as any action sequence that's ever been projected on a big screen. We see Bob dodging bullets, speeding through busy streets, causing large explosions in our wake, but none of these images resonate with us. That's because the movie doesn't care. It's just pyrotechnics for the sake of a story that the movie can't be bothered to develop, and characters the screenplay isn't the least bit interested in.

Missed opportunities rear their ugly head multiple times throughout Shooter's overly long two hour running time. We know that Bob distrusts the government, but aside from the incident we see at the beginning concerning his fallen comrade, his feelings are not developed much further than that. The fact that he was left behind in a dangerous situation is supposedly all the movie feels we need to successfully fuel the character's one-man war against the U.S. government. The rest of the cast are equally sketchy in their motivations. FBI agent Nick who eventually joins Bob's war is not developed in the slightest other than his obsession with proving that the government is lying to the public and that Bob is innocent. The villains are evil simply because they are corrupt government officials. We're just supposed to boo and hiss them on sheer principle. The plot itself is almost comically hollow, and exists simply to string a series of uninspired action sequences where explosions and bloody head shots are repeated to the point that we feel like we're watching the same sequences over and over. The movie doesn't even bother to clue us in on as to why Bob was chosen to take the fall for the assassination attempt. By the time it's all over, the audience is left asking too many questions, the most obvious one being why are we supposed to care in the first place? The movie gives us no reason to, so we're forced to just go along with it and are helpless to make any real sense of it all.

To help further distance us from the characters, the film has rounded up some performances that at best can be described as unmemorable, and at worst as being phoned in. Mark Wahlberg has done some terriffc work the past couple years, but this is not one of his finer moments. He is stone faced, unemotional and unsympathetic, almost as if he is unable to show even the slightest bit of emotion. He keeps the same expression on his face, no matter what he happens to be doing, and speaks with an almost droning tone of voice that sometimes barely registers above a mutter. He's got the appropriate build and steel-eyed gaze for the character, but there seems to be nothing going on in his actual performance. As the supporting heroes, Michael Pena and Kate Mara are equally uninspired, as they seem to barely be trying as well. Pena spends a couple scenes with his head down looking at his feet, almost as if he's embarrassed to even be seen in the movie. Mara barely gets a chance to stand out with her underwritten role who seems to exist simply to act as a damsel in distress once the screenplay requires it. As the lead villains, veteran actors Danny Glover and Ned Beatty are given very little to do but look at everyone coldly and laugh about how no one can touch them, because they're the government, and the public will always believe their lies. They deserved better, and so do we.
I have no doubt that the material within Shooter could have made for an engaging action film. But screenwriter Jonathan Lemkin seems to have followed the rules a bit too closely, and given us a highly generic and vastly underwritten film that never should have gone before the cameras in the first place. This is strictly paint-by-numbers filmmaking where characters are motivated simply because they fall under the "good" or "evil" category. No other explanation or character traits are given. They are what they are because we expect it. I wanted more. I wanted to be thrilled and entertained. Shooter cannot provide this, and falls short in just about every way imaginable.

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