Shooter

I had somewhat high hopes for this film. I am a big Mark Wahlberg fan. I like shoot-em-up action movies. Seems like this would be a good one. But I really felt like I was not the intended audience for this film. It really seemed to be aimed at the gun-culture. Early on, Danny Glover, one of the main bad guys in the movie declares "I don't carry a gun". He's the only one in the movie. And he's a bad guy. The woman in the movie answers the door to her house with one hand on the shotgun she keeps right next to the door and later fetches another gun that she keeps elsewhere to give to Wahlberg. Wahlberg is repeatedly called "Gunny", a chummy army term for a sniper. The gun-culture is fairly omnipresent, but it is "responsible" gun-culture. They are all kept under lock and key, primarily unloaded, oiled and cleaned before being put away, etc. Guns are good. And that ain't me. Surprisingly, though, and perhaps a sign of the times, there were plenty of shots at Bush and company. There are numerous references to the blunders going on in Iraq these days, the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, etc. It's like appealing to the right-wingers who have soured on Bush. The upper-middle class soccer dads looking to find fault with Bush and chat it up at the NRA meeting. In a bit of an oddity, one of the actors went thourhg one scene wearing the iconic Che shirt. The realization of course that Guevara was certainly milataristic, even if he was a lefty. So, I like those littel bits. I like slamming on Bush. But I was taken out a bit by the reenge glorification. The snively Ned Beatty senator raising up his hands and saying but I'm a senator, followed by Mark Wahlberg's "Exactly." and a kill shot to the head. I like a violent action film as much as the next guy, but this one didn't quite ring true. Oh well.