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Shooter: Difference between revisions
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Yet because he is the best at what he does, he is recruited by the government to help track down a potential sniper, only to become the scapegoat as part of a [[Government Conspiracy]]. Swagger goes on the run but knows he has to fight back, recruiting rookie FBI agent Nick Memphis to investigate. What they find reveals new details about the mission where Bob was trapped behind enemy lines.
Meanwhile, the widow of Bob's sniper partner is also dragged into the events, and Bob has to save her, though she is not a traditional [[Distressed Damsel]] [[Sawed
Shooter enjoyed moderate box office success and some critical acclaim. In its genre, it is a conspiracy thriller, and rides on the paranoia of the [[George W. Bush|Bush years]]. It also owes a lot to ''[[The Bourne Series (Film)|The Bourne Series]]'' (including the general resemblance between Wahlberg and [[Matt Damon]]), although the sniper angle and being rated R works in seperating itself from other [[Follow the Leader]] types.
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=== ''Shooter'' as examples of: ===
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* [[Crazy Survivalist]]: Bob after the Ethiopia mission.
* [[Development Hell]]: It took 14 years after the novel came out before the movie was finally made. During this period several scripts were written and discarded, including one by Stephen Hunter himself (he admits that it wasn't very good, commenting "I'm a better novelist than I am a screenwriter"). The plans to make a film of ''Point of Impact'' began back in the mid-1990s, [[What Could Have Been|with Tommy Lee Jones intended to play Bob Lee Swagger]].
* [[Does This Remind You of Anything?]]: An innocent man made a scapegoat for an assassination attempt on a President {{spoiler|while the actual shooter was somewhere else entirely}}? Sounds a lot like [[Who Shot JFK?]].
* [[Establishing Character Moment]]: We know Swagger's the best sniper because in the opening scene he {{spoiler|snipes a ''helicopter'' down.}}
* [[Fatal Family Photo]]: Bob's spotter just ''had'' to show a picture of his wife before they were assaulted. It's like Antoine Fuqua wanted to step into the shot, wave at the viewers, and yell "''this man is about to die!''" though a megaphone. But considering the rest of the movie.. it's understandable why they did it.
* [[The Film of the Book]]: Based off a book by ''Washington Post'' movie critic Stephen Hunter, fairly loosely.
* [[Foreshadowing]]: {{spoiler|Near the opening of the film, Johnson and his friends mention that the CIA guy overseeing the operation that hung Bob and his spotter out to dry died mysteriously shortly thereafter, though they never pinned anything on Bob. Guess what happens to those same men near the end of the film?}}
* [["Get Out of Jail Free" Card]]: In the end, {{spoiler|Swagger is acquitted of the crime he was framed for, the assassination of an African archbishop, by proving that the murder weapon could not have been used, thus he could not have fired it.}} This seems perfectly logical, but no one, not even the incognito [[Big Bad]] who was sitting right next to the war council, seems to address the fact that Swagger killed probably hundreds of men and caused untold amounts of property damage between the beginning of the film and now in his quest for vengeance.
** Well, not hundreds. The ones he did kill were the ones torturing an FBI agent, mercenaries protecting a war criminal and assassin, and the ones on the glacier who were there to kill him. {{spoiler|The ones at the end of the film qualify, but one gets the impression the government was quite willing to look the other way as he cleaned up some of their own garbage.}}
*** They were authority figures who supported illegal and highly murderous ends in a supposed attempt to make a better world, {{spoiler|so it is nicely ironic that they become fair game themselves. That's why Swagger says what he says before shooting the congressmen. If the lawmen himself becomes the vigilante...}}
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* [[Gunman With Three Names]]: Bob Lee Swagger. Lee may be a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald. Swagger to military joke; bullet trajectory calculations are sometimes called "SWAG" -- Sophisticated Wild-Ass Guess
** Swagger is the name of a man the author knew. He borrowed the man's name for both Swaggers.
* [[Hey, It's That Guy!]]: [[Lethal Weapon (Film)|Murtagh]] and [[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Film)|Casey Jones]] are your resident baddies for the film.
** [[Snatch|Boris the Blade]] engineered the assassination. Good thing he can dodge bullets.
** [[Twenty Four|Shari Rothenberg]] is the love interest
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* [[Revealing Coverup]]: When the policeman who shot at Bob dies a few days later "in a botched robbery", Nick sees right through it.
* [[Scope Snipe]]: Obligatory, for a sniper movie. Happens during the mountaintop confrontation.
* [[Self
* [[Shoot the Fuel Tank]]: A helicopter is taken down by shooting a propane tank it was hovering above.
* [[Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids]]: This is implied towards the end of the film as the protagonist tries to bring down a corrupt senator, a colonel, and a group of [[Private Military Contractors]]. {{spoiler|The film even includes the "This is the "[[Real Life|real world]]" type of speech from the [[Lawful Neutral|Attorney General]] towards Bob Lee Swagger.}} Of course, his [[Exact Words]] are...
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* [[Training Montage]]: Nick Memphis goes from rookie FBI agent to a sniper thanks to a lesson by Bob.
* [[Unflinching Walk]]: At the end {{spoiler|when Swagger blows up Senator Meachum's cabin}}
* [[Who Shot JFK?]]
{{quote| '''Mr. Rate:''' That's how a conspiracy works. Them boys on the Grassy Knoll they were dead within three hours, buried in the damned desert, unmarked graves out past Terlingua.<br />
'''Nick Memphis:''' You know this for a fact?<br />
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[[Category:Films of the 2000s]]
[[Category:Shooter]]
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