Starts off strong, but loses steam

Rating: 3/10 (28 March 2007)

I expected Shooter to be a worn and formulaic action movie, but I was actually quite surprised by the first thirty or so minutes. I had high hopes that it would turn out to be an entertaining and engaging film.
However, I started scratching my head once the action decreased and the conspiracy/intrigue/24-type-stuff was presented. The plot turned far-fetched and the dialogue turned silly. For all the government conspiracy that went on none of it reached a satisfactory conclusion.
For that matter, the characters themselves were one-dimensional and uninteresting. Mark Wahlberg showed a little depth at the beginning of the film, but once the shooting got good there wasn't much about him. The villains were nothing but villains (cackling, cruel, unapologetic, etc). Probably the most interesting guy for most of the movie was Michael Pena, who played an FBI agent. The whole time I thought he was Adam Beachm who played Ira Hayes in "Flags of Our Fathers."