Shooter (2007)

• Bad-guy US troops turn out to be contractors (Blackwater!)
• Bad things are, yes, about oil
• We are told, explicitly, that high command knew about abu ghraib (but only the soldiers took the fall)
• The 9/11 Commission report sits, featured, on Mark's desk and he wonders 'what lies THEY will try to tell us today' (thankfully the 9/11 tragedy didn't turn out to be orchestrated by the US govt)
• When told about the president's life being in danger, the shooter says, laconically, "I don't like him much. Didn't like the last one much either."
• There are some subtle allusions to Ruby Ridge--something that seems like pandering to a certain market segment who'll recognize those allusions immediately
• There are token WMD notes--just to make sure the audience is following along: The government lies like a rug
• A bad senator hunts in a Dick Cheney outfit
• There is government sanctioned torture

And so on. The idea that the government is composed of a bunch of lying bastards isn't new, and it is powerful. Cinematicly addressing this, however, requires a level of fineness that most predominantly action movies lack. Films like The Parallax View and The Manchurian Candidate were low on action and either high on satire or, well, dark dramas. Today, though, the idea that there's a government conspiracy seems to almost go without question: it's no longer ground-breaking enough just to have one ... you gotta punch it up. Usually with explosions.

Then there's the end. The end is a sequence of highly unlikely events where the main characters try gambits that either don't work ... or work too well for unexpected reasons. I'm okay with--today used to--not following the last 15 minutes of the movie until the punch-line is delivered. They have to make it seem like the villains have a chance before the good-guy's final plan springs into action. However with Shooter, the end is a very literal message that today's world is the wild west--and it needs a guy with a gun to clean it up.

This, combined with a sort of populist conspiracy message (Ruby Ridge, media-manipulated-lying, weapons of mass destruction, etc.) makes me uneasy: are we to take away from the movie the idea that what we really need is a one-man-army regime change? Or that, if the conspiracy theorists were right that those actions would be appropriate. But since they aren't, it's just harmless entertainment? Or that the movie is playing on our frustration at the current political climate in a calculated and manipulative fashion? Hey--I think that's the one!

When I look at the more serious (maybe even preachy) message-films like Rendition (about the transfer of prisoners to black-prisons out of the country where they can be tortured) I wonder if there are only two answers Hollywood can provide us with: helpless rage or armed resistance? For all the technical sophistication that Shooter's subject matter experts bring to the table about weapons, the final message seems unnecessarily dumbed down. It'd be interesting if the FBI had come through in the end and rolled up the conspiracy and taken down the powerful politicians behind it (maybe Whalberg could arrange an embarrassing homosexual bathroom encounter to take down the US Senator who is rife with badness? That seems to be a charge they can't suppress.)

But that would be a different movie.

-- Marco Chacon

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