A Total Gas

Rating: 8/10 (16 April 2007)

Prepare to not be bored by a single scene in a movie.
That seems to have been the guiding principle in the making of the latest Mark Wahlberg vehicle, 'Shooter.' Wahlberg plays a Rambo-like uber-sniper who can shoot someone's head off from a mile away. And as grisly as the kill scenes are and as appalling as the body-count gets in this film, you'll never be able to accuse it of having not kept you riveted.
In a twisty plot that addresses, if not engages one's intellect ( as well as one's apparent need for gratuitous violence ), Wahlberg's Bob Lee Swagger is coaxed out of retirement to help that "hidden hand" part of our government that's always up to no good in the movies. They tell him the president's been threatened with assassination and they need him to plot a defense. Turns out he's been set up to be a patsy in the way a lot of conspiracy theorists suppose Lee Harvey Oswald was set up for the JFK assassination.
But what if Oswald somehow escaped the hidden hand and set out to expose everyone involved? Swagger assembles a working-class team of three to take on a Colonel-turned-spook; a fearsome Russian defector; a comically Machiavellan U.S. Senator; their assorted goons, and a federal bureaucracy overrun with the kind of cynical, self-serving jerks everyone supposes it must be. Along the way, stuff blows up, people get their arms shot off, innumerable heads explode and I must admit, it's a total gas.
Somehow, Wahlberg strikes just the right note in another understated blue-collar hero and is almost totally believable as an expert marksman, survivalist, commando, and dude who can beat anyone in a fight.
What disappoints is the standard Hollywood hokum that crops up inevitably: Guys sprinting through a hail of automatic weapons fire without injury; life-saving rescues just in the nick of time; unmotivated and often absurd heroics; gunshot wounds that heal in a weekend with no lasting effects. This film is smart enough not to need any of this junk, but embraces it out of habit, apparently.
You probably won't feel good at the end of this movie in the way you don't necessarily feel good after a looping, high-velocity roller coaster ride -- but you definitely won't be sorry you saw it.