Assassination, mayhem and murder

Rating: 6/10 (1 April 2007)

If the John Malkovich "Booth" character in In the Line of Fire had been a good guy, he would have been Bob Lee Swagger, Mark Wahlberg's character in Shooter. Walhberg plays a master sniper/marksman who fought for his country, then dropped out after being abandoned by his superiors in a firefight in one of those African countries where the U.S. wasn't supposed to be. He lost his partner in the fight and retreated to a cabin in the mountains to live a life of solitude. Then one day, along comes a government agency colonel, played by Danny Glover, asking Wahlberg to help foil a presidential assassination attempt going to occur in the next two week. Smell a set-up? Well, it is. The assassin misses the president but gets the Ethiopian leader for whom the rally was designed (smell a set-up?), and it all gets pinned on Wahlberg. The rest if mayhem and destruction from coast-to-coast as Wahlberg escapes the entire government (well, I guess if Bin Laden can, anyone can), kills bad guys, and seeks redemption. He is helped in his efforts by a rookie FBI agent who spotted Wahlberg shortly after the assassination (Michael Pena of Crash, Babel and World Trade Center). The agent, Nick Memphis is the only agent in the whole U.S. who figures out that Bob Lee couldn't have done it. It's a big-budget shoot-em-up, blow-em-up with great photography and a totally implausible plot. And, yes, there's a girl  the widow of his dead friend, played by Kate Mara (We Are Marshall), who is a teacher and, apparently, one heck of a nurse/trauma surgeon. I liked this more than the review sounds like, but you'll want to pass if you don't like these types of one-kill-a-minute movies.