By David J. Swift
Like Singin’ in the Rain and Hairspray, the title of Shooter pretty much tells you what you’re going to get.
The main attraction is Mark Wahlberg, the deceptively talented former model who can upsell popcorn movies like The Italian Job and really shine in oddball projects like I Heart Huckabees.
Most recently Wahlberg made an indelible impression in The Departed where both he and his character earned the last word.
What puts Shooter a notch above your basic R-rated action thriller is its aggressively anti-authoritarian story — nihilists are everywhere! — and the trouble director Antoine Fuqua takes in fleshing out his characters.
There’s a renegade FBI agent (Michael Pena, the touching locksmith in Crash), a thoroughly corrupt Western oilman senator (Ned Beatty, hammily reprieving his I Am God persona from Network), the spunky redhead who quivers nicely in bravery (Kate Mara), and good ol’ Danny Glover.
Like the Rambo franchise, Shooter is polemical about the politics of the day. Rambo reported government as lazy and self-serving. Shooter reports government as rotten to the core, an exclusive club for ruthless corporatists. (Where do they get such ideas?) If its message of “hooray for freedom and honesty and guns” score emotionally at the box office there will be sequels.
You don’t name your hero Bob Lee Swagger and then leave him on ice.
Lest ye get bored with the preaching, there’s bodies. Piles and piles of bodies. Also some lovely scenery of Bob Lee Swagger’s remote mountain home in Wyoming, which as usual is played by British Columbia.
