Tuesday, April 17, 2007

SHOOTER - These people shot his dog!

I don't think you understand - these people killed my dog.SHOOTER is 50% hillarious Maguiver-like action movie. Marky Mark is a US sniper who's abandoned in Ethiopia by his own government. Back in the US, he holes up in a una-bomber shack with a big dog until impressive sounding high-ups (Danny Glover) call him back to help prevent a presidential assassination. But Marky Mark gets framed and is soon on the run with the help of a curiously Ruffalo-like FBI newbi (Michael Peña) and a cute chick who turns from third-grade teacher to Lady Vengeance with comic-book speed. This is all good clean fun and I liked the odd comedy one-liner from Wahlberg.

But SHOOTER aspires to be so much more than a meat-head Friday night multiplex filler. It wants to be *political* and provocative. But instead of the twists and turns of director Antoine Fuqua's TRAINING DAY we get a pretty heavy-handed critique of the neo-cons in general and Dick Cheney in particular. So anti-liberals should be warned. Personally, I've got nowt against the agenda, but I'd probably be able to take it more seriously if Wahlberg's character weren't avenging his exploitation as an unwitting stooge of The Man, if he weren't continuously shooting the crap out of other unwitting stooges....

SHOOTER is on release most everywhere bar Slovakia, where it opens April 26th, South Africa where it opens April 27th, Turkey where it opens May 11th, Japan where it opens June 2nd and the Czech Republic where it opens June 7th.

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