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: #2860 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

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.