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Wednesday, March 30, 2022

Movie Review: Shooter

Stars: 3 out of 5
Pros: Good conspiracy action film…
Cons: …With slow start and poor climax
The Bottom Line:
Sniper in crossfire
Uncovers conspiracy
Weaker than I hoped



“I Need You to Plan a Presidential Assassination.”

I’d always intended to watch Shooter.  It sounded to me like it could be a very good movie.  So when I stumbled up it showing on TV, I jumped at the chance to watch it.  Sadly, it wasn’t as good as I’d hoped it would be.

The story follows Bobby Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg), a trained sniper.  Three years ago, a mission he was on went wrong and his best friend was killed next to him.  He retired and moved to a house in the middle of nowhere.

Which is why he is surprised and suspicious when Isaac Johnson (Danny Glover) tracks him down.  But Isaac has tracked him down because Bobby Lee’s expertise is desperately needed.  There is chatter that someone is going to attempt to kill the President in the next couple of weeks, and they need Bobby Lee’s skill to stop it from happening.  And so he reluctantly agrees to go back into action.  However, when things once again go south, Bobby Lee finds himself on the wrong side of the investigation.  Can he clear his name?

I enjoy a good conspiracy story as well as the next person, and the action that goes along with a lone man trying to clear his name like this is also fun.  This isn’t anything terribly original; in fact, it’s rather easy to guess some of the pieces of the puzzle early on, but I still was mostly enjoying the film.  It’s a little slow in the set up, but once things get started, I quite enjoyed it.

That is until the climax.  I’m not going to give anything away except to say that I didn’t care for how they chose to end things at all.

Of course, there are tense action scenes.  They aren’t incredibly elaborate, but they are still quite well done and a lot of fun to watch.  There’s the usual suspension of disbelief, especially with how quickly a character learns certain skills.

The acting is great as well.  In addition to the cast I’ve already mentioned, we get the likes of Michael Pena as an FBI agent who gets caught up in the action and Kate Mara as the widow of Bobby Lee’s friend.  Everyone does a great job of bring their characters to life in a memorable way.  These are certainly deeper characters than the ones you’d normally see in an action film, and I appreciated that.

The slow start and the climax kept Shooter from being the action film I was hoping for.  I’m glad I watched it, but I won’t be rushing back to watch it again.

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