Shooter. Directed by Antoine Fuqua (who?). Starring Mark Wahlberg, Danny Glover, Kate Mara, Michael Pena, Ned Beatty (and what happens to him here—not in the film but at the hands of the above Fuqua—is essentially what happened to him in Deliverance: “Squeal like a piggy…”).
Remember your BRASS formula: Breathe, Relax, Aim, Slack, Squeeze. Mark Wahlberg, imposing as any screen presence around today, can carry the weight, has the dramatic “range” in the term of art (what us dumbos used to call aface) and a limber, agile grace that makes him believable as an action guy. He stole, to put it simply, The Departed from heavy-hitters Jack Nicholson and Leo DiCaprio with just a few minutes in front of the camera (and the audience). Soooooooooo… this oughta be a good flick, cobbling together as it does all the hot stuff just now: Kate Mara, teevee siren who fetches up a little skin ( not enough? Oh, yeah… when was last time you were in same grid square even with a fee-male tummy you could bounce a quarter off? Well, okay, then…) for us; sniper lore, hot back from Irak and all the news coverage of the unfathomable, lonely, focused, lethal one-shot, cold-barrel killers (“shooters,” in Army talk, in case you missed it, you dummy); mysterious assassinations and guvamint duplicity, notably arrogant, overweight senators from landlocked northwestern states; valorization (as I’ve learnt to say) of not-from-this-hemisphere agents of decency (in this case Michael Pena, who plays a junior FBI agent who’s seized the Truth—accessible to those who have ears to see and on and on—but whose inferior status and likely race—not sure if he’s Ecuadoran or Pakistani… or worse—denieshim among the whitebread Feds both respect and credibility as events gyrate out of control during a very public, very political murder; dark forces underpinning Evil right the flock beneath our noses and I think they’re out there this very minute; underdog retribution through expedient means and homemade pyrotechnic doowops made from stuff in the kitchen and what you got in your pockets even now, improvised demolitions, sneaky red Indian stuff that we, like, teach all our soldier guys and maybe—whoa!—we’d better do sommat about veterans’ bennies just in case a couple of these guys go kerflooey on us… like those Vietnam, Republic of squirrels did; finally, a happy if troubled (‘cause life is, like, thataway, y’know) ending (bad guys dead; good guy’s got a shot at the tight jeans, high cheekbones, pouty lips protagonista).
Plot you’ve seen before, alas, but somehow you don’t mind when Mark Wahlberg takes you up to the top of roller coaster and boots you off in grocery cart. Jimmy Lee Swagger (Wahlberg… and no, I don’t know anybody actually named “Swagger”) is a ree-tired Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant, a sniper whose last outing went South (literally) when duplicitous guvamint poags pulled the plug on an operation in some (Two)Third(s) World cesspool and cost Jimmy’s bud and spotter his life. Jimmy’s retreated, like all of us tripwire combat veteran headcases, to a cabin in the woods stuffed with guns and cholesterol-sodden comfort foods. Into this idyll (variously pronounced), comes now Colonel Johnson (Danny Glover, who’s kinda given up being good guy these days… ooopsy daisy, didn’t mean to give it away) who needs an intuitive, instinctive mad-dog shooter to second guess a potential assassin of no less than the President. Jimmy can’t turn down his Nation in Need, so sets up in Rahwayor Fenway or some other pesthole up in Yankeeland to stalk the stalker. Then it happens! Whoa! A double bluff, didn’t-see-that-coming, out of nowhere duplicitous guvamint swindle and next thing you know Jimmy’s got coupla rounds in him then tossed into the drink… annnnnnnnnd Feds think he’s done the deed. On the run…
Feds think he’s the shooter (!)… well, aaaaaaaaaall the Feds except Agent Nick Memphis (Michael Pena), a newbie nobody listens to but who studies the crime scene with fresh eyes (having for an instant looked into the clear eyes of the fleeing Jimmy) and who persuades himself that Jimmy didn’t do it and—worser yet—says so and then throws his career away to honor his hunch (the way we all would, natch…). Jimmy—shot, alone, accused—falls (the way we all would, natch) into the resilient bosom(s) of his former (now dead) buddy’s former (now hot) fiancée, high cheekbones, tight jeans, pouty lips school teacher Sarah (Kate Mara) in rural Goatrope, Georgia (or worse), who lives alone on account of nobody in Goatrope wants anything to do with a girl got an independent income, a home of her own, a halfway wit and halfway grit, a disposition toward real men, and a butt would stop a clock. Jimmy settles in, recovers, then decides—what else?—to exact his vengeance, both for the burnt buddy in Africa and the subterfuge against him. Two stops: WalMart to pick up the kitchen counter contraband we’ll need to make pipe bombs (that explode with more megatonnage than they had at Eniwetok, but, hey…) and other cool revenge-enabling doohickies; Tennessee (“the patron state of shooting stuff”), to consult the Sage of the Hills, some old cracker in thick glasses who seems to know all about ballistics… and ballistickers. And we’re off…
Plenty of technical sniper stuff about trajectory and holdover and flight of bullet and target acquisition for the prurient among us. Some growlygruff sermonizing about America and those other funny-shaped countries and globalization and the world is flat and intercorporitude and on and on. We’d love to think a brave, forthright, decent dumbo (like, oh, say…us) could claw his way through the endless layers of cohorts on that Evil Onion (just as we’d maybe like to claw our way through the layers of shorts on that Weevil Sarah). Lots of action (some of it less necessary than other) but an ending that seems as oily as the agents of inequity we thought we’d undone. Rule: The movie ends with the gunfight at O.K. Corral. Codas, epilogues, appendices, afterthoughts… for the flockin’ ballet (and everybody knows they’re all Commies… or worse).