Mark Wahlberg is no Harrison Ford

Rating: 6/10 (5 June 2007)

Ever since "The 39 Steps", the theme of an innocent man framed for a crime he didn't commit has been a staple of action movies. And likely, it won't go away anytime soon, as long as it keeps happening in real life (the Duke Lacrosse scandal, anyone?). "Shooter" tries--and fails--to adapt this age-old theme to the post-9/11 political landscape.
In the prologue, we see Bobby Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg) as an army sniper in Iraq. His job is to protect a convoy from terrorist attack. When he fails and his best friend dies, he isolates himself in a Montana cabin with no communication with the outside world other than the Internet.
Eventually, he is approached by government agents (Danny Glover & Elias Koteas) with a request that he please lend his expertise to warding off an assassination attempt on the President. He reluctantly accepts, but at the same time knows these guys are crooked. His worst fears are realized when the agents kill an African arch-bishop at a Presidential rally and Swagger is framed for the job. And for the next two hours, Swagger has to play a delicate balancing act of letting the authorities pursue him without actually letting them catch him so that he can prove his innocence once and for all.
This is a competently written, directed and acted film. And I suppose I would have liked it, except I saw it done so much better 14 years ago in "The Fugitive". In that film, Harrison Ford's performance was justly nominated for an Academy Award. The roles of both Swagger in this film, and Dr. Richard Kimble in the other required the lead actor to make seamless transitions from sympathetic everyman to shell-shocked victim to menacing opponent. Ford could pull it off. So could Russell Crowe in "Gladiator". Wahlberg simply can't. It's not that he's a bad actor. He's actually very good at playing innocents ("Boogie Nights"), blue-collar heroes ("Invincible"), and even anti-heroes ("The Departed"), but in movies like this or "Planet of the Apes", I have always felt that he lacks that certain grit that made John Wayne, Charlton Heston and Clint Eastwood so great, despite their limitations as actors.
As far as the other actors are concerned, music fans will be interested in seeing the Band's Levon Helm without a beard and wearing an old-fashioned pair of wire-rimmed glasses. On the other hand, I was underwhelmed by Ned Beatty pouring on a syrupy deep south accent for a U.S. Senator from Montana. Everyone else is pretty much forgettable.
"Shooter" is a run-of-the mill action movie with exactly zero surprises unless you've never seen "North by Northwest" or "First Blood". There's nothing particularly wrong with it except for a bit of miscasting, but it is completely lacking in originality. 6 out of 10.