Framing Rambo

Rating: 4/10 (27 March 2007)

Mark Wahlberg, who got some due recognition for his part as an honest cop in The Departed, slipped back on the greasy pole of acting with his Rambo like portrayal of a guy set up as a presidential assassin.
In Shooter, Wahlberg plays Bobby Lee Swagger a Marine trained sharpshooter with an instinct for survival that's taken from Sly Stallone's Rambo films. Including the fact that he self doctor's himself after taking two policeman's bullets.
After surviving an incident in Ethiopia where the USA isn't supposed to be having a military presence, Mark is recruited by a mysterious colonel played by Danny Glover to plan a presidential assassination from a distance, something he's an expert at. I mean really, if bells didn't go off in this man's head.
Anyway it's a set up, and Wahlberg spends the rest of the film out smarting the entire secret federal government which apparently is headed by a Senator from Montana played by Ned Beatty.
Shooter is a film way too caught up in its own agenda of showing the USA to be the big bad Satan of the planet earth. Everybody in the film has done better work and 50 years from now this will not be a big item at a Mark Wahlberg film festival.
Nice location photography and special effects. That seems to be what sells cinema in this day and age sometimes.