Starts strongly, but falters in the second half

Rating: Null/10 (19 January 2008)

I saw this film in two sittings and, as luck would have it, interrupted my viewing pretty much at the point where it stops being one type of film - conspiracy thriller - and turns into the routine type of shoot-em-up that Arnie was making back in the mid-eighties. Sadly, that is where the film also starts to deteriorate. Up to this point - where disaffected military man Bob Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg) and FBI agent Memphis (Michael Pena) pay a visit on the old guy who helped bury the guys who shot President Kennedy - it is an absorbing thriller that places Swagger in a seemingly impossible situation from which, using only his guile and military training, he must extricate himself. After this point, though, the film grows increasingly silly, piling up ludicrous plot twists with alarming speed as it abandons all logic in favour of big explosions and bloody violence.
This is the kind of film conspiracy theorists must love. Obviously inspired by the theories of Lee Harvey Oswald's innocence, it contains some neat ideas but is spoiled by too many plot holes and downright unbelievable plot twists (Swagger's immediate release from custody, for example, on his word that he had disarmed all his weapons before leaving home. OK then, you're free to leave? I don't think so, somehow).
Danny Glover, in the kind of role usually bagged by Morgan Freeman gives a good account of himself as a Colonel with questionable motives, and Pena is believable in a stereotypical role as the rookie FBI agent who is the only one to believe Swagger's protestations of innocence. Wahlberg is also good, although in a role, it has to be said, that would probably only stretch the most limited of acting talent.