Shooter

Shooter (Mark Wahlberg, Danny Glover, Michael Pena, Kate Mara) – If the John Malkovich “Booth” character in In the Line of Fire had been a good guy, he would have been Bob Lee Swagger, Mark Wahlberg’s character in Shooter.  Walhberg plays a master sniper/marksman who fought for his country, then dropped out after being abandoned by his superiors in a firefight in one of those African countries where the U.S. wasn’t supposed to be.  He lost his partner in the fight and retreated to a cabin in the mountains to live a life of solitude.  Then one day, along comes a government agency colonel, played by Danny Glover, asking Wahlberg to help foil a presidential assassination attempt going to occur in the next two week.  Smell a set-up?  Well, it is.  The assassin misses the president but gets the Ethiopian leader for whom the rally was designed (smell a set-up here?), and it all gets pinned on Wahlberg. The rest if mayhem and destruction from coast-to-coast as Wahlberg escapes the entire government (well, I guess if Bin Laden can, anyone can), kills all the bad guys, and is redeemed.  He is helped in his efforts by a rookie FBI agent who spotted Wahlberg shortly after the assassination (Michael Pena of Crash, Babel and World Trade Center). The agent, Nick Memphis (I’m not a stickler for these things but how did a Hispanic get named Nick Memphis or am I stereotyping?), is the only agent in the whole U.S. who figures out that Bob Lee (how could a guy like Wahlberg, without a hint of southern in him get named Bob Lee or am I just stereotyping?) couldn’t have done it.  It’s a big-budget shoot-em-up, blow-em-up with great photography and a totally implausible plot.  And, yes, there’s a girl – the widow of his dead friend, played by Kate Mara (We Are Marshall), who is a teacher and, apparently, one heckuva nurse/trauma surgeon.  I liked this more than the review sounds like, but you’ll want to pass if you don’t like these types of one-kill-a-minute movies.