Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2360 in DVD
• Brand: Paramount
• Released on: 2007-06-26
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: NTSC, Widescreen
• Original language: English, French, Spanish
• Subtitled in: English
• Dubbed in: French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .15 pounds
• Running time: 124 minutes

Amazon.com
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

Customer Reviews

Edge of your seat thriller
After a mission gone awry, Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg) now leads a solitary existence in the mountains of Wyoming. When he is called back to assist a covert military group (headed by Danny Glover) in determining how to pull off an assasination attempt, he soon discovers that he's been set up in an elaborate ruse to take the fall. Hell hath no fury like a Marine scorned, and Swagger becomes a PO'ed two-man army (once he hooks up with disgraced FBI agent Michael Pena), determined to bring the real culprits to justice. Directd by Antoine Fuqua ("Training Day"), this high octane conspiracy thriller just doesn't let up and will keep the viewer guessing. Though it's pretty violent - it's well worth watching!

My only drawback was having to hear Glover's dialogue - was it me or did he have some really ill-fitting dentures that provided him with the most annoying lisp. I was just waiting for them to fall out. Overall though, Glover has not given a more chilling performance since "Witness," and Wahlberg who can also be pretty menacing, proves to be a great action hero.

The DVD extras include a great behind the scenes segment featuring the technical advisor, himself a former military sniper, who provides insight into that occupation as well as the weapons used in the movie.

Poor Marksmanship..
I was all set to enjoy a good action film with a fine cast, and sure enough the film began that way. But very quickly after the main pivot point in the plot, the film spirals off into leftist paranoia and clumsy editorializing. A feeble attempt at relevance has the reverse effect of turning the film trite and cliched. The villains that might have been interesting, had they been presented with any depth, became cartoonish stereotypes, and the plot became increasingly ludicrous and muddled with the result that any admiration for the craft involved was completely subsumed by this simplistic and trivial sermonizing.

Too bad, because I like Mark Wahlburg and Fuqua has shown he has good chops in the action genre and can present complex characters ala Training Day. But if I needed another pretentious misrepresentation of facts, I need only access any number of mainstream media. No doubt there is a vast audience that will either ignore the op-ed message in the film or will eat-it-up. Sorry, I'm not interested in lame caricatures and simplistic conventional wisdom. Maybe 1/2 more star solely for the quality of the film-making despite the content. It's not a horrible film, having some good moments before it descends into utter silliness. No, sadly, it's a dumb film, that could have been much better, considering the talent involved.

The Good & Bad Of 'Shooter'
THE GOOD - What a great start! The first half of this film is very good. It looks like, as advertised, that if you enjoyed the "Bourne" movies ("The Bourne Identity" and "The Bourne Supremacy") you should like this and that was the case with me. Mark Walhber's "Bob Lee Swagger" is a likable hero, a good guy in every sense. The first half included an interesting study on what it takes to be a good "sniper." It also had good photography.

The second half of this made me wonder, "Who wrote this script? Oliver Stone? Michael Moore? The DNC? I couldn't believe all the politics - all the Liberal conspiracies and the anti-Bush Administration comments - in the last hour of this movie. First, this extreme paranoid view that everyone in the government is corrupt is vastly overworked by Hollywood and this movie is the topper where they aren't even subtle about these theories. They turn a decent action thriller into one big Left Wing propaganda piece. What a shame. And how about those action scenes? Fifty trained guys and an armed helicopter against "Rambo" in here and guess who wins?
Stupid......really stupid.

How a film can be so entertaining and somewhat intelligent and go down the dumper so fast and be so stupid in the second half is staggering.