Stuff Gits Blowed Up Real Good

Rating: 5/10 (25 March 2007)

Shooter is a movie where Stuff Gits Blowed Up Real Good. If you're in the mood for a b-grade action flick where stuff gits blowed up and the cartoon character bad guys git their heads blowed off, this one is passable. You could find a better mindless action flick, but this one will do in a pinch.
Unfortunately, Shooter is filled with clumsy, ham-handed attempts to be politically relevant. The film takes the bold political stance that it's wrong to kill an entire village filled with men women and children for personal gain. It goes way out on a limb and says that one should never assassinate the Archbishop of Etheopia. But the absolute worst crime imaginable is to kill a man's dog. Heads will roll. Literally.
The Evil Shadow Government Conspiracy is, of course, Republican. Really Republican. So Republican that they have portraits of every single Republican president in history proudly displayed on the walls of Evil Shadow Government Conspiracy Headquarters. Everywhere you look, George HW Bush or Ronald Reagan or Herbert Hoover or Teddy Roosevelt is watching your every move. Even William Howard Taft glares contemptuously from On High. Of course the Mister Big Evil Puppetmaster gives lip service to the notion that the Evil Shadow Government Conspiracy is neither Republican nor Democrat, but come on. William Howard Freaking Taft? Who's kidding whom?
In this movie, Marky Mark is accused of a crime he didn't commit. To exonerate himself, he commits hundreds of other crimes which ought to be worth a few thousand years in jail, but which instead earn him a wink wink nudge nudge from the Attorney General of the United States. After all, they did kill his dog.
Marky Mark plots a Presidential Assassination. He steals trucks. He assaults law enforcement officials. He causes dozens of automobile accidents. He resists arrest. He blows stuff up. He practices medicine without a license. He points a loaded high-powered weapon at the Attorney General of the United States. He destroys a government helicopter. He manufactures and detonates high explosive weapons. He accesses top secret government files. He destroys several expensive houses. He kills dozens of hapless dupes of the Evil Shadow Government Conspriacy. Even though he himself was once a hapless dupe of the Evil Shadow Government Conspiracy, and for all he knows the people he killed are hardworking joes with girlfriends in medical school and lovable furry dogs at home. All of this is BEFORE he murders a sitting US Senator, the Senator's chief of staff and several key assistants.
Marky Mark's accomplices are no better. An FBI guy goes AWOL and blows up more than his share of stuff and kills a fair number of bodyguards. The girlfriend pumps three bullets into the chest of an unarmed man. Literally. His arm was three feet away from the rest of his body. Why the FBI guy and Miss Thang aren't in orange jumpsuits by the end of the film is beyond me.
And how these people get a personal audience with the Attorney General is incomprehensible. If you were accused of being, say, the Unabomber, could you arrange a pow-wow with the USAG? Oh, and by the way, bring the weapon you confiscated from the assassination scene.
The kicker? All of Marky Mark's illegal activity is justified because the Evil Shadow Government Conspiracy acted UNCONSTITUTIONALLY, even though the Attorney General of The United States can't think of a single crime with which to charge anyone. The next time you're making a few bucks on the side pulling guard duty and a 1980's rap star sticks a knife in your throat so he can blow up your friends with home-made explosives, you'll be comforted to know that the guy who killed you was protecting the Constitution. And avenging his dog.
I could go on, but any attempt to make sense of this picture's muddled attempt at political relevance can only kill brain cells. Like I said, this is a movie where Stuff Gits Blowed Up Real Good. If you can enjoy it strictly on that level, you'll survive the experience.