An above average action film

Rating: 6/10 (25 August 2015)

When it comes to action films Antoine fuqua is a pretty safe bet as a director and this film is pretty solid addition to his collection even though it does have problems. The premise of the film sees a retired sniper bought in by the government to try and prevent the assassination of the president. Until he is framed for the shot taken and ends up on the run. Now at first I wasn't sure if I was going to buy mark wahlberg as this deadly sniper but as the film progressed I started to like him more. He started to gain a bit of a personality and was damaged a bit showing his vulnerability. Michael Peña was also really good in this film, he is the cop hunting down wahlberg and he brings his usual enthusiasm to the role but a bit more modestly which I really liked. Kate Mara was okay in the film but I felt like her character didn't really have anything to do in the film and could have been completely written out of the film. Danby glover was completely underutilized in this film which ends up making it more difficult to get invested in the story. I like the revenge aspects of the story and when done I think they were done pretty well. But this film just got a little bit too convoluted for its own good and didn't do enough with its character to make you care enough. The script was okay with some good dialogue but sometimes it becomes wooden and boring with a bit of a lack of humour in there as well. The action scenes involving just simple sniping and stealth were really good. However, at some points there are literally choppers involved and it just becomes unbelievable and ridiculous. Overall this film is alright but there were simple things that could have been done to make it better.