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List Price: $19.99 | | Label: Paramount
Salesrank: 2404
Released: June 26, 2007 |
| Our Price: $8.64 |
| Used Price: $1.51 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Bob Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg), a former Marine Corps sniper who leaves the military after a mission goes bad. After he is reluctantly pressed back into service, Swagger is double-crossed again. With two bullets in him and the subject of a nationwide manhunt, Swagger begins his revenge, which will take down the most powerful people in the country.
Description of Shooter (Widescreen Edition):
A movie that would not have been out of place in the run of paranoid-political thrillers of the 1970s, Shooter works an entertaining variation on the assassination picture. Mark Wahlberg, carrying over good mojo from The Departed, slides neatly into the character of Bob Lee Swagger, master marksman. Swagger has retreated from his duty as an off-the-books hired gun for the military, having become disillusioned with his government (switching on his TV at his remote mountain cabin, he mutters, "Let's see what kind of lies they're trying to sell us today."). Ah, but the government needs Swagger to scope out the location of a rumored attempt on the life of the president, so a shadowy government operative (Danny Glover) begs Swagger to use his sniper's skills to out-fox the assassin. From there--well, spoilers are not fair, since the movie has a few legitimate shocks and a very nice wrong-man scenario about to unfold.
A novel by the Washington Post's Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic Stephen Hunter gives the movie a logical spine, even if the premise itself is the stuff of conspiracy theorists. Wahlberg gets support from Michael Pena, as a skeptical FBI agent; Kate Mara, as a trustworthy widow; and Ned Beatty, trailing along memories of Network, as a supremely cynical Senator. Along with the well-executed action sequences (the previously unreliable director Antoine Fuqua gets it in gear here), the movie includes a few potshots at the Bush administration. No, that doesn't put Shooter at the level of The Parallax View or All the President's Men, but it provides some tang along with the flying bullets. --Robert Horton
Beyond Shooter
More Sniper / Hit Man Movies on DVD | 
More DVDs with Mark Wahlberg | 
The Novel |
Stills from Shooter (click for larger image) Shooter (Widescreen Edition) Reviews:
SHOOTER 
2009-11-04 - OUTSTANDING EXCAPE MOVIE. HAD THE ORIGINAL IN DVD FORMAT AND PURCHASED THE BLUE-RAY VERSION SO I COULD ENJOY THE EVENT BETTER.
Shooter 
2009-10-18 - I love the movie, lots of action and the good guy got the bad guys. Just the wasy it should be.
The Shooter DVD
2009-09-23 - This is a really good suspense movie. The seller is excellent to deal with.
Shooter is a HIT!
2009-09-22 - Mark Wahlberg does a great job in this movie! It is an action packed movie from start to finish, where there is not really a dull moment. Not many movies about an expert with a sniper rifle, and others like SNIPER were not very good. If sniper rifles interest you, or just modern guns/rifles in general than you will really enjoy this movie. Lots of great shoot out scenes, and lots of explosions! Rated R because of violence and language. This could be Mark Wahlberg's best movie, and it's one of my favorites for sure! DVD extras are great too, with features showing Mark Wahlberg actually getting sniper rifle training! Very Cool!
SNIPED 
2009-09-22 - Ever take anyone snipe hunting or been taken yourself? If so, you can understand how I felt watching this movie. A lot of exciting promise that ultimately leaves you feeling foolish for believing that something special might just happen. SHOOTER starts off strong and in the first 20 minutes promises to be Bourne like in quality and excitement. Sadly all that degenerates in the 2nd act where hackneyed politics ala Michal Moore become more important than storyline or plot progression. The promise of the opening of the film are pretty much shattered at that point, and are then ground to dust in the despicably bad final act. No attempt is made to make the 'bad guys' even remotely believable or rounded. They are cardboard cut-outs more fit to be in an episode of Scooby-do or Rocky & Bullwinkle than a serious political thriller. They quite literally sit around in a cabin laughing uproariously about their misdeeds and how they flaunted the law! It's comical in the sad, I'm laughing at the writers and producer of this film sort of way. Danny Glover has certainly fallen fast and far--at least his role in SHOOTER isn't as bad as his more recent Night Train.
There are some good scenes in the film, especially the opening scene and the escape scene near the end of the first act. These just set you up for disappointment as the movie progresses simultaneously towards COMMANDO like carnage and cliched socialist rants.
In brief, this is a movie that had promise but was made top-heavy and silly by an over emphasis on stupid, cliched, anti-government political rants and sermonizing as well as silly 30 on 1 Rambo scenes. The reason the Bourne movies are so great is that in spite of some less believable bits (the car chase in movie two where Bourne steals a Russian cab for example) they reflect accurate craft and are respectable from a realism standpoint. SHOOTER is not believable at all. It is silly and joyless.
1 Star. Only worth renting if you like blind action films and don't mind long winded sermons about the evils of government or cardboard cut out villains who express themselves by barefacedly guffawing over their own moral corruption.
