Review of Shooter (2007) by Markb. — 26 Mar 2007

Stephen Hunter, on whose novel Point of Impact this is based, is not only a crack writer of thrillers, but in his other life is one of the sharpest, wittiest and most perceptive movie critics currently working.

(His Washington Post reviews are frequently displayed on this site--see for yourself!) Hunter is a military buff, a gun enthusiast and a political conservative, but unlike certain other Republican movie reviewers we could name (are you listening, Michael Medved? Didn't think so.

) Hunter doesn't feel the need to have his personal politics seep into and dominate every word he writes; he's perfectly capable of appreciating and enjoying the skill with which Barbara Koppel made the Dixie Chicks documentary Shut Up & Sing while still thinking that singer Natalie Maines is a loudmouth blowhard, even though he undoubtedly knows that Koppel and Maines are on the same ideological page.

And his novels, most of which center on either ex-Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger or his Mississippi police sergeant father Earl, are catnip even for someone like me who's bored silly by Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy; if you buy or borrow any of them, prepare to take the next day off from work because they're truly unputdownable.

That's why Shooter, in which Bob Lee (Mark Wahlberg) is duped by the US government into masterminding an assassination that's intended to go awry but instead goes in an entirely different direction that leaves him a scapegoat and a fugitive, is surprising on two different levels.

First off, no big-studio movie since The Constant Gardener (which was actually released through Universal's boutique label, Focus) has been this blatant in shouting its take on America's less-than-completely-altruistic overseas activities, which no doubt will make this a discomfiting night at the movies for those who believe that the last conspiracy our government was involved in had to do with hiding Bill's Whitewater documents and Monica's dress.

That's no cinematic sin, however, no matter what your political stripe, but being utterly mediocre, generic and boring is another story...and unfortunately, except for an expository scene involving an old geezer and gun expert (rocker Levon Helm, who's just wonderful here and whose delivery is very reminiscent of the late, lamented Richard Farnsworth) and a bloody climactic shootout in which Swagger manages to disarm his enemies, Shooter is sadly guilty.

And Wahlberg, who fully deserved all the praise and the Oscar nomination he got as the theatrically foulmouthed cop in The Departed, is completely wrong as Bob Lee. In Hunter's books, he's a bigger than life, mythic, strong-but-silent figure, an amalgam of John Fenimore Cooper's Deerslayer, John Ford's The Ringo Kid, Sergio Leone's and Clint Eastwood's The Man With No Name and Sly Stallone's John Rambo, but as Wahlberg plays him, he's a muscled pretty boy who gets a little smudged.

And Wahlberg doesn't even TRY to get the Southern accent--but don't worry, overactress Kate Mara, as a buddy's widow who offers him refuge, does enough of one for both of them. Trendily grimy cinematography (even in the outdoor scenes) and director Antoine Fuqua's sloppy storytelling (he shows Wahlberg and Mara preparing their defense with rows of cans of whipped cream but neglects to tell us what they're for, and I doubt that they're using the stuff for a kinky breather from the action) make me anxious for Hunter the film critic to avenge the crime done to Hunter the novelist by opening up an even bigger can of you-know-what on the moviemakers who trashed his work than Bob Lee Swagger does on those who betrayed HIM.