Over the years, especially the most recent ones, violence in action movies has become a lot more brutal and a lot less fun. Thanks to this decade's two most influential action-oriented narratives—the TV blockbuster ""24,"" which features Jack Bauer torturing the shit out of nefarious people for the greater good, and ""The Bourne Identity,"" which revels in nasty bouts of hand-to-hand combat—the line between ""hard R"" action and formerly neutered PG-13 action blurs more every day. In this present environment, when little differentiates an R-rated action movie from Monday night's primetime lineup, where does a meat-and-potatoes guy movie like ""Shooter"" fit in?
Even with the half-assed political commentary, which is unfortunately in vogue these days, ""Shooter"" feels like a relic from the '80s or '90s. From the start, it's absolutely throwaway entertainment; seemingly harboring no agenda besides the desire to blow shit up, lovingly doting on numerous head shots and satisfy its mostly male audience.
Mark Wahlberg is our stoic alpha-male hero, the fantastically named Bob Lee Swagger, an ex-Marine who barely survived a bungled military mission in Ethiopia that resulted in the death of his best friend and spotter. Three years later, a shadowy colonel (Danny Glover) and his equally sinister accomplice (Elias Koteas) convince Swagger to leave his rustic cabin and assist them in uncovering a plot to assassinate the president. Of course, this is only a ruse to frame him for the death of an Ethiopian archbishop, and soon enough, Swagger is severely injured and on the run amid a nationwide manhunt.
Also factoring in to his quest for vengeance are Nick Memphis (Michael Pena), a disgraced FBI agent, and Sara (Kate Mara), his best friend's widow, who nurses Swagger back to health. Aside from the bumbling sidekick and the hot help, however, Swagger is a classic lone-wolf protagonist, laconically tracking his prey from point A to point B for the majority of the film. A man named Swagger has little time for one-liners and even less for the requisite romance with Sara when corrupt government heads need to roll (or, more specifically, explode).
Then why doesn't ""Shooter"" work? As a thriller, it gives us just enough plot to chew on without literally being a parade of violence perpetrated from afar. As a guy flick, it supplies an attractive love interest but hardly lets romance distract from the explosions. And as a hard-R lark, it ladles up quite a helping of the kind of intense, graphic action you couldn't see on ""24."" The ingredients seem to add up to a fun, testosterone-charged B-movie blast with an A-list budget—a poor man's ""Bourne Identity"" in the best possible sense.
But despite the best intentions of Wahlberg and director Antoine Fuqua, ""Shooter"" is ultimately a mediocre, unsatisfying experience. It starts out pretty strong, its fast-paced action sequences and idyllic mountain setting echoing B-movie classics like ""Commando"" and ""Cliffhanger,"" but slows to a major degree after Swagger finds safety. In movie like this, little matters besides the action and the pacing. Nearly every action movie has to slow down and catch its breath, but when ""Shooter"" takes a breather, it's to bitch about politics.
Once the political whining starts, it offsets all the other elements that make ""Shooter"" such a passable, decent piece of exploitation. The filmmakers seem to be consciously putting entertainment on the back burner so they can show how our government is an evil, rotting establishment populated by sneering old men who carry out their dastardly schemes under the shroud of political power. This agenda seems to negatively affect the action as well, which gets stupider and more desperate as it goes on (a sequence involving Memphis and a rigged suicide device demonstrates this aptly). It's not enough for our government villains to be evil murderers; our plucky heroine has to be sexually assaulted, our hero's trusty beer-retrieving dog has to be iced and such.
The movie is ostensibly about truth, justice and the American way, but with a surplus of inarticulate bellyaching, it's an adequate adventure heavily bloated by whiny downtime between head shots. The mindset of a true B-movie is inherently at odds with a political polemic worth paying attention to; in other words, you can't convincingly extol the virtues of harmonious democracy and then end with an orgasmic ballet of government-purging violence (which is exactly what ""Shooter"" does). You can chastise the government or you can glorify extreme violence, but you can't do both, and when you do, you end up with a compromised, forgettable product like ""Shooter.""
