Decent action flick with some flaws

Rating: 7/10 (24 September 2008)

Antoine Fuqua, the director behind the tight Training Day and not-so-tight Tears of the Sun, directs Jason Bourne.. um, Mark Wahlberg in a very Bournish agent action/thriller film. Sounds mildly interesting, but turns out to be a great improvement over Tears of the Sun, and nearly as good as Training Day.
Mark Wahlberg is Bob Lee Swagger, a sniper who got betrayed by his employers and was left in the battlefield with his best friend. Swagger survives but his friend dies. Embittered by this Swagger leaves the army and moves into a wilderness to live a solitary life. After three years Swagger is approached by Colonel Isaac Johnson (always fantastic Danny Clover) and offered a new mission, to prevent an assassination of the president. Swagger eventually accepts the mission and for this point on the ride begins with its twists, turns and some high adrenaline packed action.
This film deserves a credit for its abiding interesting script, I couldn't wait to see how this story would unfold, and its well paced and gruesome action scenes, there were numerous head shots as you could guess there would be in a sniper movie, and hand-to-hand combat scenes were realistic and brutal as well. Swaggers jiu-jitsu skills compete with his sniping skill.
But there were three major flaws which prevents Shooter getting a higher rating from me. One star away from every these fooleries: 1. Sarah Fenn (Kate Mara). Not a bad acting but her character was absolutely needless. And thanks to her scenes this film drags a bit in the halfway.
2. The ending was quite disappointing, but not going to say anymore about it, don't want to spoil it for anyone. Seems that some viewers actually think that's a great ending.
3. The whole America thing. Im not saying that this was anti-American or pro-American, and I don't really care if this was either one, I'm just SO bored with films commenting the state of America somehow. I live in Europe and I do not care! For Americans, think it like this, imagine if, for example, France would produce movies for universal distribution as much as Hollywood. And every second french movie would handle french government or politics somehow at least in some subplot. Would you grew tired of it? Without these flaws this movie would be perfect action movie in the same league with Die Hard, Hard Boiled, Ronin, and so on.
7/10