Shooter fires resounding round

By Lucian Tucker
Collegian Editor
March 21, 2007

I prepared several insulting titles for this review of Antoine Fuqua’s Shooter, such as “Fuqua shoots a blank,” “Shoot me now” and “Shooter: Shoot and a miss.” However, I won’t need to use them because Shooter hits the mark.

A political movie topped with action, Shooter follows former Army sniper Bob Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg), who is pried from his reclusive home to help prevent the sniping of the president of the United States. Colonel Isaac Johnson (Danny Glover) asks Swagger to stage the assassination as to see where and how the real sniper would take the shot.

Swagger goes through the motions of a sniper — scouting out locations and such — afterwards reporting his findings to Colonel Johnson. Unfortunately, he is framed and shot twice, before barely escaping with his life.

His new mission is clear: somehow expose the corrupt government while dodging and killing everyone who crosses his path.

The violence is plentiful. There are headshots, explosions, stabbings and burning. The best part is how realistic it all looked — I could almost see pieces of brain, along with sprays of blood, flying from the backs of heads.

In the midst of all this mayhem, Fuqua adds a nice dose of humor and political commentary. The former lightened the mood while the latter darkened it. Both I found welcoming, but moviegoers who don’t like their politics meshing with their action might be turned off.

There is one funny scene where Colonel Johnson is sitting with the vice president (who is essentially Dick Cheney), laughing and mocking in typical bad guy fashion, until he realizes something is wrong and mutters, “Swaggy!” The movie theater burst in laughter.

I was, however, turned off by Glover’s acting. He spoke with a raspy lisp that irked me to no end. I don’t know if he was doing it to sound cool or if that’s just how he talks now. Either way, he brought the movie down a notch.

Contrary to Glover, Wahlberg performs well. His character is calm and skillful, much like himself. In his distinct voice, he rattles off the finer points of sniping as if he himself was a sniper. Wahlberg also does well pulling off the physical acting.

At one point, Swagger becomes allies with Nick Memphis (Michael Peña), an apathetic FBI agent who suddenly becomes interested in knowing the truth and exposing the corruption of the government.

Peña does well as an apathetic character, so well, that when Swagger is framed and he suddenly starts caring, it’s hard to believe. Even more unbelievable is how quickly Swagger teaches him how to snipe. Seemingly overnight, Memphis masters one shot kills, despite how nervous he appears the entire time.

Every “hero” needs a love interest, but Swagger’s situation is different. His love interest, Sarah Fenn (Kate Mara), is the widow of his best friend who died fighting alongside him in the Army.

Despite the kiss in the trailer, and the chemistry developed throughout the film, Fenn and Swagger never kiss in the movie. Fuqua probably decided that focusing more on their relationship would lessen Shooter’s effectiveness, but it’s almost obvious that scenes are missing.

There are a few other things that bothered me in the movie, but the impressive action scenes and the laugh-out-loud moments outweigh them. As a result, I give this movie a solid B.

tuckerl1@lasalle.edu