Review of Shooter (2007) by Dawdlingpoet — 24 Nov 2021

This is a tense thriller, with plenty of action. The story is pretty good, it keeps you entertained while not being overly transparent. If explosions are 'your thing', then you should enjoy this movie because there are numerous explosions - indeed the special effects are quite impressive.

The cast put in decent performances and in general this is an entertaining movie. Its pretty fast paced with fewer 'filler scenes' (dialogue based scenes between characters which don't add a great deal to the movie generally) than you may find in other similar movies. There are some bloody scenes in the movie, it features various gunfight scenes and moderate violence, with one or two scenes being a bit grisly, so be aware of that if your thinking about watching it, especially with young adults. The movie carries a 15 rating, which reflects that, plus strong language also present.

Theme wise there's clearly a political theme throughout, with the emphasis being on corruption in politics (so I wouldn't say it covers new ground). I suppose it would be a bit much to have a movie like this without some sort of moral message present, although I wouldn't say you necessary walk away feeling you've learnt something new or anything like that. This is probably a movie made to mainly appeal to men for the gunfights and violence and also as one of the few female characters (in this movie there's the typical/token woman in distress who needs saving) quickly takes a like for Bob, the main character. For male viewers, actresses include Kate Mara and Rhona Mitra. For female viewers you can also enjoy some eye candy in the form of the main stars Mark Wahlberg and Michael Pena. It should also be noted that Danny Glover also appears as one of the main characters - I guess he's particularly keen on action movies, obviously being well known for appearing in the Lethal Weapon franchise.

I don't feel there's a great deal that can be said about this movie - other movies I could point to as being fairly similar would be Vantage Point and Broken Arrow, so if you enjoyed those then I reckon you'd probably enjoy this too. I gave this review the title 'It does what it says on the cover' because I think the name of the movie says it all really - its a movie that features, more than anything else, plenty of shooting, based around a character who shoots for a living, so hence the title. Adding too much else would be unnecessary padding I think to be honest, so ill leave this section here.

To be honest, overall this is pretty much a general action movie and im not sure if anything stands out especially so to merit a recommendation, so no I probably wouldn't but thats not to say that its particularly poor quality or not worth checking out, if the genre is one your keen on.

There are better and worse movies of its type, its quite entertaining but not overly memorable, so judge for yourself whether or not you feel its worth catching but generally I can't really justify recommending it as such.