Manages to sustain interest: Shooter
Genre: Action
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Michael Pena, Danny Glover, Kate Mara, Elias Koteas, Rhona Mitra, Ned Beatty.
Storyline: A retired sniper is framed in an assassination plot. He must move fast to locate the actual killer. Bottomline: Old wine in an assembly-line bottle.
Run for your life when a U.S. Government agency comes to you with a proposition and don’t stop running till the bad guys are gone. This seems to be author Stephen Hunter’s message in his book on which the film is based. Unfortunately, the
hero does the exact opposite and finds himself in big trouble.
Bob Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg), an ace sniper, lives with his dog in self-imposed isolation after a failed mission.
The feds seek his expertise to foil the assassination of the U.S. President at an award ceremony featuring an Ethiopian Archbishop. Only, the Archbishop gets killed as the baddies intended all along, and Swagger discovers he has been set up as the fall guy.
Who masterminded the conspiracy? Who is the assassin?
Shot, badly wounded, with every cop and intelligence agent out to get him, Swagger must find out and act fast. He can turn to just two people for help – his deceased partner’s widow, Sarah (Kate Mara) and a rookie FBI agent, Nick Memphis (Michael Pena).
Wahlberg is a good reason to see the movie as he does a convincing Jason Bourne-Rambo act, complete with precision rifles and explosives.
While most of the other actors display either patient resignation or a jarring forced enthusiasm in essaying their done-to-death stereotypes, Wahlberg plays his part with a matter-of-fact conviction that lends a degree of credibility to a tired storyline.
He succeeds because he neither overplays nor underplays, opting instead for a grounded focus on the mindset of a hunted man whose priority is survival, justice and ethics, in that order. And if you thought Wahlberg scored higher as a cerebral actor than as a hunk, think again. This guy proves he can be both.
Michael Pena’s gauche air works well in his role as the gullible rookie. The ‘Dumb and Dumber’ haircut helps.Though this film lacks the thrill-a-minute tautness of its big-budget cousins like ‘The Bourne Identity,’ it isn’t a damp squib. If you are a fan of this genre but felt too dazed to cope with the bewildering maze of twists and turns in the latter, you would enjoy this flick. Of course, credibility goes for a toss along the way – the Justice Department takes no action against a guilty colonel even when presented with incontrovertible evidence? Then there’s the vigilante justice with cars and houses blown up in the background and Wahlberg striding slow motion towards the camera. Just don’t ask too many questions.
KLT
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