The Shooter

It8217;s hard to tell whether Stephen Hunter the Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic of The Washington Post intended his novel Point of Impact to be made into a film. Because while Hunter may have developed his character Bob Lee Swagger, a former Marine legendary for his shooting prowess, over a trilogy of novels, on screen he is just another Marine with a short understanding of history and a long sense of wounded pride.

Used and left to die by the Army in an operation on the Eritrea-Ethiopia border, the disillusioned SwaggerWahlberg is leading a hermetic life in the mountains. But one day, some time after 9/11 we know that through a passing shot of the 9/11 Commission Report, strategically placed near Swagger8217;s desktop, he is visited by three men. They seemingly belong to one of those unnamed US secret government organisations, and they have just unearthed a plot to shoot the President.

They seek Swagger8217;s help to stop the assassination.

Colonel Johnson8217;s Glover speech about patriotism, the allegiance to the Flag etc etc draw Swagger in. But soon Swagger finds himself on the run as the wanted assassin. He realises he was just a pawn in a conspiracy stretching from Philadelphia to Ethiopia.

In the novel, Swagger earned his stripes in Vietnam and the plot he unravelled was in El Salvador. But the film has been updated for our times, complete with undisguised references to Muslim fundamentalists and an FBI agent Pena who can pass off as from the Middle-East and on whom Fuqua seems to be initially focusing our suspicions. A Senator also mocks in the film: 8220;This is the only country where the Secretary of Defense can go on TV and say this is not about oil, this is about democracy.8221;

But while the film starts off well, keeping us completely off balance till the point of the shooting 8212; largely thanks to an earnest Wahlberg 8212;- it soon unravels into yet another Hollywood potboiler. There is lot of shooting, lot of talk about shooting including wind velocity and metallurgy, and lots of things blow up. But don8217;t even try to think backwards from an oil pipeline and village in Ethiopia to the White House, or thereabouts.

As for the film8217;s politics, the references to Iraq, even WMDs and the 8220;lies8221; the government tells us are just window dressing. It8217;s ultimately about Swagger and swagger against the powers that be.

Fuqua hard to remember he once made Training Day and team don8217;t even strain their brains thinking of a name for the Archbishop of Ethiopia, who is at the centre of the assassination plot. He8217;s called: Desmond Mutumbo. Maybe those archbishop types are all called Desmond in Africa. Who knows? After all, it8217;s Africa.

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