Shooter

For an action film from the guy who directed Training Day, you’d expect a little something more interesting than a by-the-numbers shoot-’em-up, and The Shooter is a little more, but not by much. One suspects that only the presence of impending Oscar nominee Mark Wahlberg kept this puppy from going straight to the rental shelves. Walhberg grimaces a lot as a bad-assed Special Op sniper framed for an assassination orchestrated by rogue operatives to cover up Yankee involvement in Ethiopian genocide, and he applies his elite asskicking training to getting things sorted out. Things blow up in slow motion, Wahlberg gets to swagger in slow motion, people get shot in slow motion, and the whole damned thing just seems like it was shot through a tub of molasses. It looks sort of cool, but it’s shallow water.