Shooter

I like a good revenge flick. The simple act of enacting painful vengeance on those who have done you wrong has propelled stories of every genre from westerns to action films to Hong Kong throw downs. Shooter is firmly in the family of somebody tried to set me up to take a fall but I ain’t having none of that and will kill every one in my way on the path to truth genre.

Mark Wahlberg plays Bob Lee Swagger (based on name alone, how could I not like this film? Bob Lee Swagger? What a great revenge flick name!), ex-Army sniper bad ass that lives in the mountains with his dog and grows a mangy beard, long hair and surfs the internet. The government show up on his cabin doorstep and ask him to do his patriotic duty and help prevent the president’s assassination. Soon, he’s on the run, a patsy in a government conspiracy and looking to exact revenge on those who set him up. In other words, he ain’t having none of that!

Like most people seeking revenge in these kinds of films, they are usually skilled in the ways to kill and have no compunction unleashing their fury on the guilty or the innocent. Bob Lee Swagger is such a killing machine. He can deliver pinpoint death from a variety of weapons (the firepower on display will make gun fetishists highly aroused. I can see Michael Bay attending a screening of this and sitting on the front row with a giddy grin on his film-Anti-Christ face.) and ropes in a few others on his quest for payback (and a little truth too).

Shooter is extremely implausible with lots of holes in the story but since I like revenge films—I’m also into films about snipers!—I surprisingly kind of liked it. Shooter is what it is, a genre movie bubbling with testosterone and a really high body count. On the day I saw it, that was enough for me.