|
|
SHOOTER (Mar 2007)
Director: Antoine Fuqua.
Writer:
Jonathan Lemkin, Stephen Hunter.
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Michael Peña, Danny Glover, Kate Mara, Elias Koteas,
Rhona Mitra, Jonathan Walker, Justin Louis, Tate Donovan, Rade Serbedzija, Alan
C. Peterson, Ned Beatty.
 |
Now that's a shooter!
|
|
Shooter is Sharp but Misses the Marky.
by
Jon Dunmore © 2 Apr 2007.
SHOOTER achieves that balance between action, political skullduggery, pretty
orange explosions and Mark Wahlberg's big guns (and I don't mean his military
sniper rifles), which notches it a cut above most political thrillers of its paranoid
ilk - until its pat ending.
With
his shrapnel-explosive performance in THE DEPARTED, Wahlberg shrugged off the last vestiges of Marky Mark, so from
now on - in deference to this bona fide Actor - I respectfully abstain from any
allusions to wigga rap, funky bunches and exposed underpant. (But we've still
got his biceps and obliques - give a reviewer something to work with!)
Wahlberg
is patriot Bob Lee Swagger, USMC sharpshooter, able to hit moving targets over
a mile away, who leaves the corp disillusioned after a morally-ambiguous mission
in Ethiopia goes all hela-snafu. After three idyllic years isolated in panoramic
mountains with his big dog, a copy of the 9-11 Commission Report, and web-surfing
to "see what propaganda they're feeding us now," he receives an unannounced,
unwelcome visit from Colonel Isaac Johnson (Danny Glover, lisping badly through
his dentures - he really is gettin' too old for this shit), who wants to hire
Swagger for a unique mission - to deter a presidential assassination by scoping
out potential methods on how a sharpshooter of Swagger's caliber may be able to
pull it off.
Though
we could hear a frame-up coming like an eighteen-wheeler with a bad clutch, our
boy Swagger obliviously swaggers into it. If his mind is soft, his body is still
hard (calm down, ladies!), and he fields two bullet wounds and a green FBI agent
(Michael Peña - last seen under a WORLD TRADE CENTER) to escape narrowly with his life, while a whole government
arm deploys to manhunt him when they should be saving hostages in Iran or fixing
potholes on my street.
Peña
is Nick Memphis, who refuses to accept the "official" FBI version of
Swagger's assassination attempt, due to inadvertently being bitch-slapped by Swagger
himself during his escape. His jigsaw construction of the clues leads him to ally
with Swagger, who has in turn allied with Sarah (Kate Mara), the girlfriend of
a dead fellow soldier. Which kinda annoys for its cliché. Let's not kid
ourselves - when the "ally-with-the-dead-buddy's-ex" scenario arises
in a movie, the girl is ALWAYS single and it ALWAYS leads to panty - I think the
first clue might have been when Sarah opens her door to the filthy, terrified,
near-death Swagger (who is no more than a mild acquaintance), dressed in nothing
but see-through top and undies, not bothering to close her robe. Then we just
sit back and wait for Wahlberg to get the guns out… which he does, as she
dresses his wounds, which in movie parlance is just another method of foreplay.
Swagger
and Memphis uncover the all-purpose "corrupt government plot" behind
Swagger's setup, with quite obvious digs at the George W. administration along
the way. (At this juncture - 2007, four years into an unwinnable war after two
years in an unwon war - it's quite easy to dig and get a collective amen.) When
Colonel Johnson lisps, "Do we allow America to be ruled by thugs?" Swagger
replies, "Some years we do." Oh, snap!
Directed
by Antoine Fuqua, from Jonathan Lemkin's screenplay of Stephen Hunter's novel,
Point of Impact, Swagger's quest terminates Rade Sherbedgia and Elias Koteas
as bad guys along the ladder, Ned Beatty eventually uncovered as the corrupt senator
atop the ladder, reveling in the nation's political audacity and his perceived
impunity, "We live in a country where the Secretary of Defense can go on
national tv and say it's about freedom and not about oil." "The bosses
know. We know their bosses know. The problem is in admitting that the leaders
know." With his words, this movie might as well be handing out subpoenas
to Rumsfeld, Bush, Rove, Cheney and Wolfowitz.
It
is astounding to realize that the definition of Patriot has flip-flopped to someone
who DOES own a copy of the 9-11 Commission Report. Not ten years ago, anyone
surfing the web, mumbling about propaganda would have been considered treasonous.
But Swagger is painted as the reddest, whitest and bluest Patriot in this film
- BECAUSE he questions the government. Illustrates how adversely the George W.
Klan has affected the United States: that the HERO of a popular movie - not
"anti-hero" or "ambiguous villain" - can criticize the administration
so loudly and meet with vindication rather than stultification.
But
this is where the film meanders into "We Can Dream, Can't We?" status.
The conspiracy reaches to such high government offices that Beatty's character
is right to contemptuously sneer about one sharpshooter not being able to curb
it. But after a faux-climax that does not payoff (a grand, panoramic
shootout in snowy mountains) and a military hearing which also does not payoff
(where Swagger demonstrates his big gun - the one that can counter the earth's
Coriolis effect with its power, not the one that can make ladies drop trou when
body-oiled), we know that a REAL climax is coming, one of insensible - yet Eastwood-ian
avenger - proportions. (Cue pretty orange explosions.)
It
doesn't seem to matter to the film-makers that Swagger's methodology is only the
corrupt administration's Decider-like tyranny and Might-Is-Right anarchy turned
back on themselves - which therefore does not raise the Hero morally above his
opponents but abandons him right amongst them. The paradox is that the parochial
W. Bush administration regards only those people who support and behave like them
(i.e. morally bankrupt) as the only true Patriots.
So
after SHOOTER succinctly sends the disheartening, yet intrinsically correct
message that you can't clean up the insidious corruption amongst elected officials
with a big gun - Bob Lee Swagger does just that.
Now
that's a Patriot.
END |
|
|
SHOOTER (Mar 2007)
Director: Antoine Fuqua.
Writer: Jonathan Lemkin, Stephen Hunter.
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Michael Peña, Danny Glover, Kate Mara, Elias Koteas,
Rhona Mitra, Jonathan Walker, Justin Louis, Tate Donovan, Rade Serbedzija, Alan
C. Peterson, Ned Beatty.
|
|
