Missing the Marky Mark

As a “24” enthusiast, I am capable of scaling skyscraping heights to dangle my disbelief.
It's preposterous, but in an addictive, empty-calorie kind of way.
And, as anyone else who has been an avid follower of this season, I have been forced to muster more suspension to Golden Gate Bridge-like proportions. And just when I thought the creators could had plausibility stretched further than Joan Rivers face, along comes a film like “Shooter,” that makes “24” look like a documentary by comparison.
The film stars Mark Wahlberg as a special ops sniper who is called out of his mountain-top seclusion to assist the government in capturing a potential assassin.
The film is apparently based on “Point of Impact,” a novel by “Washington Post” film critic Stephen Hunter. Having never read the book, I can only state that if the film adheres closely to the text, Hunter should count each and every “Post” paycheck as a blessing.
The annals of the action genre has had its share names so manly, that you are required to draw testicles on them when you write them out – John Stone, Mason Storm, Johnny Utah, Chance Bordeaux, Gibson Rickenbacker, Ray Quick, Buck Swain, Lincoln Hawk. And now, thanks to Stephen Hunter, we now have Bobby Lee Swagger to add to the mix.
Swagger is also given the requisite tough-guy past – while on assignment for the government (and while performing his task with Swiss quartz precision, of course), he loses his best buddy and is abandoned by his government (which, of course, claims that he is the elite of the elite, so he is trained to survive or accept his fate).
We catch up with Swagger three years later, or more accurately “THIRTY SIX MONTHS LATER” as the title card at the bottom of the screen screams (these are a same titles that prove oh-so-helpful as we see shots of the Capital and the Washington Monument, clueing us in that it is, indeed, “WASHINGTON, D.C.”). Bobby is now living in snow-capped solitude with his just his guns, his dog and a fashionable trucker's cap.
He's visited by a mysterious government heavy by the name of Colonel Isaac Johnson (played by an oddly lisping Danny Glover). Now, why the Colonel wasn't given a cool name like Dirk Boilermaker, Crash McMolten, Stone Bastardson or Chase Slashenkill is a secret between Mr. Hunter and his editors. It seems the government needs Bobby to scope out where an assassin may attempt to plug the president. Of course, Bobby, being the most skilled, intelligent triggerman alive does what any rational person would do when he is approached by a shadowy bunch of government types asking a favor – he quickly agrees to do it.
If this review were the film, I would be required to put a title card right about here that reads:
THINGS DON'T GO AS PLANNED AND BOBBY IS FRAMED FOR THE ASSASSINATION.
The rest of the film is Bobby piecing together the conspiracy while eluding essentially every branch of the the armed forces in the country. Bobby is a trained survivor, which means that all he needs are some carpet fibers, a pen cap, some cumin and Susan B. Anthony dollar and he is capable of fashioning some homemade napalm for those sticky situations. (One of my favorites is a concoction he uses to heal some bullet wounds that we are told was used during the Civil War. It includes such ingredients as sugar, salt and whippit hits... oh, those crazy Confederates!).
As indestructible as Bobby seems to be, he still gets some help along the way. A rookie FBI agent, with the equally preposterous name of Nick Memphis (played by Michael Peña) immediately believes every word of Swagger's and happily joins him in mowing down countless agents to help clear his name.
Swagger also gets a love interest, in the form of his dead buddy's widow (but remember, THIRTY SIX MONTHS have passed, so the girl's gotta git her some lovin', right?). The woman, who acts as his guardian angel is named, I kid you not, Sarah Fenn. I suppose Sarah Femm would have been, you know, too obvious.
Director Antoine Fuqua (“Training Day”) plays “Shooter” out as an odd mishmash of right-wing hokum (Bobby's a gun nut, Big Government is bad, and there are more slow-motion flag waves than a day-long broadcast of the Fox “News” Channel), but also stirs in leftist shout-outs (a hero sporting a Che Guevara T-shirt, a lecherous Senator, played by Ned Beatty who is all-too reminiscent of our snarling Vice Prez).
But it's asking too much of a film to concern itself with deeper political statements when it has a mess of stuff that needs blowin' up real good. Fuqua is more concerned about framing Wahlberg walking (in slow motion, of course) away from a wall of fire than the motivations or reprocussions of his actions.
Some may argue that it's just a movie and that it should be accepted merely on entertainment value alone, and that is fine. But when loading “Shooter” with talent such as Wahlberg, Glover and director Fuqua, it's only fair that the audience demand just a bit more than a story that even Steven Segal's camp would most likely have rejected.
Even though “Shooter” may have scored a third-place finish in a very busy week at the box office, it is a film that is immediately forgettable and will most likely live on only in a number of direct-to-video sequels that will pop up in the years ahead, where the lead (undoubtedly played by another actor) will get teamed with a computer whiz sidekick named Melvin Stand and the two will face countless government combatants in “Shooter 2: Stand and Swagger.”
For more movie reviews, check out Rector's website “Use Soap” at “http://mysite.verizon.net/beachrun113.”