Shooter (2007)
Directed by Antoine Fuqua
A top Marine sniper, Bob Lee Swagger, leaves the military after a mission goes horribly awry and disappears, living in seclusion. He is coaxed back into service after a high-profile government official convinces him to help thwart a plot to kill the President of the United States. Ultimately double-crossed and framed for the attempt, Swagger becomes the target of a nationwide manhunt. He goes on the run to track the real killer and find out who exactly set him up, and why, eventually seeking revenge against some of the most powerful and corrupt leaders in the free world.
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22 films that influenced Shooter
What critics say influenced Shooter
Think of "The Parallax View," "Three Days of the Condor," "JFK," "The Day of the Jackal," "North By Northwest," and "The Fugitive"; this film shamelessly borrows from the best, and while it isn't as good as any of these I mentioned, it does move along at a commendable pace and with at least a modicum of excitement, thanks to its director, Antoine Fuqua ("Training Day," "Tears of the Sun"), and its star.
The sense of free-floating menace (even a billowing American flag seems faintly ominous) and the framing of a good guy by dark political forces seem derived from the 1974 assassination classic, "The Parallax View."
Despite its obvious aspirations to be the kind of paranoid political thriller that "The Parallax View" and "Three Days of the Condor" were in the mid-'70s, "Shooter" is at its best - which is very good indeed - when it's a rootin' tootin' shootin' party.
Adapting Washington Post film critic Stephen Hunter’s novel “Point of Impact,” the first entry in a trilogy featuring military sniper Bob Lee Swagger, scenarist Jonathan Lemkin stirs in recognizable ingredients from “The Parallax View,” “The Day of the Jackal,” “Seven Days in May” and “Three Days of the Condor,” feeding on and encouraging suspicion of nefarious deeds and dastardly motives among men in high places.
The screenwriter, Jonathan Lemkin, has acknowledged a debt not only to Hunter but to “Three Days of the Condor” and “The Parallax View,” seventies thrillers that drew on fears of shadowy government conspiracies.
Think of "The Parallax View," "Three Days of the Condor," "JFK," "The Day of the Jackal," "North By Northwest," and "The Fugitive"; this film shamelessly borrows from the best, and while it isn't as good as any of these I mentioned, it does move along at a commendable pace and with at least a modicum of excitement, thanks to its director, Antoine Fuqua ("Training Day," "Tears of the Sun"), and its star.
As much as Fuqua and his fellow filmmakers might like to think of Shooter as being in the vein of '70s thrillers like Three Days of the Condor and Parallax View, the film is really a throwback to the not terribly complicated action movies of the '80s where bad guys in suits were methodically taken down by a rugged anti-hero with firepower galore.
Shooter - Take a little of Rambo, The Fugitive, Sniper and Three Days of the Condor, dumb them down, add a flagrant left-wing agenda, and you have Shooter, an atrocious, boring, hopelessly generic action-thriller.
Despite its obvious aspirations to be the kind of paranoid political thriller that "The Parallax View" and "Three Days of the Condor" were in the mid-'70s, "Shooter" is at its best - which is very good indeed - when it's a rootin' tootin' shootin' party.
Adapting Washington Post film critic Stephen Hunter’s novel “Point of Impact,” the first entry in a trilogy featuring military sniper Bob Lee Swagger, scenarist Jonathan Lemkin stirs in recognizable ingredients from “The Parallax View,” “The Day of the Jackal,” “Seven Days in May” and “Three Days of the Condor,” feeding on and encouraging suspicion of nefarious deeds and dastardly motives among men in high places.
The screenwriter, Jonathan Lemkin, has acknowledged a debt not only to Hunter but to “Three Days of the Condor” and “The Parallax View,” seventies thrillers that drew on fears of shadowy government conspiracies.
Nick's obsessive scrutiny of the shooting tape strongly recalls Oliver Stone's 1991 "JFK."
Think of "The Parallax View," "Three Days of the Condor," "JFK," "The Day of the Jackal," "North By Northwest," and "The Fugitive"; this film shamelessly borrows from the best, and while it isn't as good as any of these I mentioned, it does move along at a commendable pace and with at least a modicum of excitement, thanks to its director, Antoine Fuqua ("Training Day," "Tears of the Sun"), and its star.
Think of "The Parallax View," "Three Days of the Condor," "JFK," "The Day of the Jackal," "North By Northwest," and "The Fugitive"; this film shamelessly borrows from the best, and while it isn't as good as any of these I mentioned, it does move along at a commendable pace and with at least a modicum of excitement, thanks to its director, Antoine Fuqua ("Training Day," "Tears of the Sun"), and its star.
Adapting Washington Post film critic Stephen Hunter’s novel “Point of Impact,” the first entry in a trilogy featuring military sniper Bob Lee Swagger, scenarist Jonathan Lemkin stirs in recognizable ingredients from “The Parallax View,” “The Day of the Jackal,” “Seven Days in May” and “Three Days of the Condor,” feeding on and encouraging suspicion of nefarious deeds and dastardly motives among men in high places.
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Although "Shooter" ably disguises itself as an action flick, there are far more layers to Mark Wahlberg and Antoine Fuqua's take on Hunter's premise than this kind of movie usually allows; "The Bourne Identity" is a good reference point, as is Harrison Ford's "The Fugitive."
In the 1971 vigilante classic "Dirty Harry," Clint Eastwood's angry San Francisco detective, Harry Callahan, brought muscular justice to a city that had gone soft on the scum of society.
The Dirty Harry -style villain in Shooter —the punk looking to make Bob Swagger’s day—is none other than the U.S. government, as embodied by an unctuous retired colonel (Danny Glover) and a Machiavellian senator from Montana (Ned Beatty).
It's like a combination of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, MacGyver, Syriana, and Rambo.
Maybe if someone had hired someone other than Jonathan Lemkin (his last credit was the dismal Red Planet in 2000) to write the thing ... but they didn’t, so instead of the kind of “Syriana (2005) with explosions” that director Antoine Fuqua possibly envisioned, we get a pretentious Rambo movie with superior acting.
Furthermore, Wahlberg is so unconvincing here that he makes Tom Berenger's performance in the three Sniper films seem positively Oscar caliber.
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Jonathan Lemkin's screenplay (from the Stephen Hunter novel Point of Impact) thereafter drives off a cliff of Death Wish banalities that abuse credibility, story integrity and a supporting character who shall not be named.
After stocking up on explosives (paid for how?) and a quick round of commando training, the newly formed duo do battle with the armed forces sent to exterminate them by Senator Charles F. Meachum (Ned Beatty, "Spring Forward," "Sweet Land"), Johnson's boss.