Review of Shooter (2007) by Hotelcentral — 09 Mar 2019

This is a pretty good action flick which benefits from the excellent work of Levon Helm as a backwoods firearms expert, and Ned Beatty as a very corrupt US senator. Unfortunately, this is also a film that will confirm all the worst suspicions of right-wing paranoids who are already convinced that the US government is their worst enemy and Muslims are not far behind.

There is of course one major flaw. The bad guys are looking for someone to use as a fall guy in an assassination. So who do they hire? They want the best sniper on the planet. So how about Bob Lee Swagger? Good pick. Except for the "fact" that the last guys who hired Swagger, and betrayed him, were all hunted down and killed by Swagger. Is this really the guy you want to betray? Well, if you're an arrogant maniac, why the hell not?

On the plus side, the finale gets dragged out because of course our hero has to stop short of taking justice into his own hands until he's given the government a chance to do the right thing, but of course that doesn't work out so the inevitable shoot down is merely delayed.

I'd give the film a 7 if not for the political aspect catering to the extremists in the audience--which seems a deliberate choice.