Trite trigger flick, unrealized potential

Rating: 4/10 (28 June 2007)

There's lots to enjoy about this movie, unfortunately they didn't film any of it. All of the suspense has been removed in favor of shot after shot of...shots. The director clearly took the title of this unrealized film to heart and removed anything that didn't come from the barrel of a gun. Which is a shame, because as far as political-assassination thrillers go, the set-up here isn't bad. It's clever fare, and while it doesn't break any new ground in the genre, it should have delivered exactly what the moviegoer wanted; taut plot line, suspension of disbelief, resolution. Unfortunately the screenwriter, actors, and director got in the way. The characters are hollow; Wahlberg's Bob Lee Swagger lives up to his name, but if they wanted a fully descriptive moniker, they should have named him Scowln' Swagger. That's all he does. There's no time left to see him seethe over the government's initial betrayal, nor time to watch his equilibrium drop after he's betrayed again and again. It's all water off a duck's back. He get's burned, he shoots things. No emotion, nor internal reflection, just bullets. This may fit the character, but it doesn't take him anywhere. The rest of the characters are equally one-dimensional. Ned Betty is a caricature of a Senator spouting one hackneyed big-money catchphrase after another; Danny Glover has back story we never see and consequently never care about; and Kate Mara's in the movie, but she's hardly used at all. Most of these actor's do a fine job playing the characters written for them. Their lines are are throwaway-trite, angry, boring one liners propping up feeble dialog that never reveals a thing. Worse, it's all been heard before, in thrillers that had half as much material to work with from the outset. Of course, this is an action movie. We paid for blood. We are rewarded. The action sequences are good, the cinematography is crisp, good guys shoot bad guys, all traits reminiscent of The Italian Job remake. Obviously Mark Wahlberg has a niche in the genre. But the movie here lacks any semblance of taking itself seriously, of following one action to its next logical consequence. The most ridiculous things happen prompting dozens of question marks, then they simply go away as if they never existed. What you get is people who shoot and stuff that gets shot. But in an era where real military men and women are involved in our news and our lives on a very close level, this movie feels soulless. We could care about Swagger and what happens to him, and become all the more interested in the movie for it. Or we could just blow some more stuff up. I wanted to like this movie, I wanted to root for Swagger, I wanted to hate the villains...but it never develops, it never comes alive. In the end, it's a tale of a movie that could have been.