Shooter Rewrites the Lee Harvey Oswald Script

Rating: 9/10 (24 April 2007)

A rather more gritty, dirty, nasty take on the Bourne Identity theme. Bourne is the story of one man. Shooter is the story of a nation.
Betrayed soldier Swagger aka Shooter (Mark Wahlberg) lives a Ruby Ridge like isolated existence against the stunningly beautiful backdrop of forested mountain country. Is that the only way Americans can seek beauty, virtue, spiritual healing? By fleeing to the wilderness? But the Government institutions that screwed him once come back to exploit his love of country and heritage a second time. They want a Lee Harvey Oswald patsy like that portrayed in Oliver Stone's "JFK" An Ethiopian politician is about to speak the embarrassing truth about the role of Big Oil and US Intelligence in killing off the villagers unfortunate enough to be protesting about their displacement for a pipe line installation.
I came home from Shooter and turned on my television, to see the last few minutes of Part One of James Jandak Wood's documentary "Crude Impact". It concerned the killing of Nigerian villagers who were opposing the building of a Shell Oil installation on their land. It had earlier dealt with the incursions of Texaco into Ecuador.
This ain't Rambo  This is real life as we live it in the twenty-first century.
I think the most sobering moment in the film is the depiction of Shooter (with some assistance from a disaffected FBI agent) killing off a platoon of his own country's soldiers. A patriot taking up arms against his own countrymen.
Another disturbing aspect is the degradation in which his countrymen live. Kate Mara has been criticized for her performance as his dead spotter's widow. I fail to see its defects. She is no less a cipher than the arms expert whose knowledge Swagger seeks out in his quest to discover what is going on at the rotten core of his country's government.
It seems that all the characters live in conditions of near squalor. Even the inhabitants of the big cities. Philadelphia has a grimy, unkempt look, crying out for a coat of new paint. It brings to mind that Talking Heads song, "I Wouldn't Live There If You Paid Me".
And they all mumble so incoherently that the provision of subtitles would have been a boon to the viewer.
All except the "front men" like Ned Beatty's senator  but then he is no more substantial a character than the sum of his lying words.
I have heard criticism of the film's climax. Maybe Swagger is more clever that Lee Harvey Oswald, but it is that culmination that injects some element of hope into the nightmare that has been portrayed up on the screen for two absorbing and stimulating hours.
I saw "Half Nelson" earlier in the week, In that film an intelligent, articulate, widely read teacher gives up the struggle and reduces his own existence to that of a drug filled haze. At least Shooter seeks a way to reform the system, even if it is the clichéd route of the old western heroes.
When do we get an American hero who can take on the evil system without resort to bloodshed, and win. It does not have to Luke Skywalker. Let's have another Jim Garrison (from "JFK"), using words instead of bullets. And let him triumph this time.
This film really got to me. It altered my mood for days. Left me wanting to see it again. It is more than just another action movie.