Shooter (2007 film)

Shooter
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Antoine Fuqua
Screenplay by	Jonathan Lemkin
Based on	Point of Impact 1993 novel by Stephen Hunter
Produced by	Lorenzo di Bonaventura Ric Kidney
Starring	Mark Wahlberg Michael Peña Danny Glover Kate Mara Elias Koteas Rhona Mitra Rade Šerbedžija Ned Beatty
Cinematography	Peter Menzies Jr.
Edited by	Conrad Buff Eric Sears
Music by	Mark Mancina
Production companies	Paramount Pictures di Bonaventura Pictures
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date	March 23, 2007 (2007-03-23)
Running time	124 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$61 million
Box office	$95.7 million

Shooter is a 2007 American action thriller film directed by Antoine Fuqua and written by Jonathan Lemkin, based on the 1993 novel Point of Impact by Stephen Hunter. The film follows Force Recon Marine Scout Sniper veteran Bob Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg), who is framed for murder by a mercenary unit operating for a private military firm. The film also stars Michael Peña, Danny Glover, Kate Mara, Levon Helm, and Ned Beatty.

Shooter was produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura through Di Bonaventura Pictures, and released by Paramount Pictures in the United States on March 23, 2007. The film received mixed reviews and grossed $95.7 million on a $61 million budget.

Plot

Force Recon Scout Snipers Gunnery Sergeant Bob Lee Swagger and his spotter Donnie Fenn provide rearguard overwatch for a black ops mission in Ethiopia. The mission has been successful, but when covering the retreat of friendly forces, enemy militia discover Swagger and Fenn's position and assault them with helicopter gunship, resulting in Fenn's death. The CIA officer supervising the operation disavows the mission and strands them in enemy territory without any backups.

Three years later, Swagger is retired veteran living in the Wind River Range, Wyoming. Colonel Isaac Johnson seeks Swagger's help to prevent a possible assassination attempt on the President during a speaking event. Reluctantly, Swagger agrees and identifies Philadelphia as the best location, pinpointing likely sniper spots.

Swagger joins Johnson at an overwatch position during the speech. As a sniper kills Ethiopian Archbishop Desmond Mutumbo, the President's guest, a PPD officer on Johnson's payroll shoots Swagger, who survives the shot after falling through a window, escapes after disarming rookie FBI Agent Nick Memphis, jumping into the Delaware River and hitchhiking under a ferry. Soon, news reports and evidence, including Swagger's CheyTac M200 sniper rifle as the murder weapon, emerges to the public, initiating a manhunt. Evading authorities, Swagger travels to Kentucky and meets Fenn's widow, Sarah, who treats his injuries.

Memphis grows suspicious of the unusually rapid conclusions, exacerbated by the PPD officer's odd death off-duty during an alleged mugging, begins his own investigation and realizes that the assassination is actually conducted with a remotely controlled gun. Sarah and Swagger discreetly feed Memphis information, furthering his investigation until he catches Johnson's attention, who orders his men to kidnap and kill Memphis. Before they can stage Memphis' suicide, Swagger kills them, releases Memphis and requests his help bringing down Johnson. The two travel to Tennessee and meet with firearms expert Mr. Rate, who explains paper-patching can be used to confuse ballistic fingerprinting and deduces that the only other person alive capable of making such a long-range shot is the crippled Serbian sniper Mikhaylo Sczerbiak, whom Swagger has unawarely met when working for Johnson. Swagger concludes that he was used to conduct reconnaissance for the wheelchair-bound Sczerbiak, who performed the actual assassination remotely. At the same time, Sarah's connection to Swagger is uncovered, and Payne and abducts her via home invasion.

In Virginia, Swagger and Memphis infiltrate Sczerbiak's estate, who reveals Johnson works for incumbent U.S. Senator Charles Meachum on behalf of oil conglomerates exploiting developing nations for profit. In the earlier mission, Swagger and Fenn had unknowingly covered the private military contractors who massacred an entire village on the Eritrea–Ethiopia border to make way for pipelines, and were deliberately abandoned so they could be killed in action as part of the planned cover-up. Under Johnson's order, Sczerbiak assassinated Mutumbo, who was going to tell about the massacre during his speech, to prevent Johnson's crimes against humanity from being revealed to the public. Sczerbiak also informs Swagger about Sarah's abduction, and then commits suicide as mercenaries close in on the estate. With Sczerbiak's confession recorded, Swagger and Memphis shoot their way out and escapes to Montana, tips off the FBI, and arranges a private meeting with Meachum and Johnson.

Johnson, Meachum and Payne arrive at the meeting point on a snowy mountaintop, with Sarah held at gunpoint. With Memphis as a decoy, Swagger eliminates Johnson's counter-snipers and disarms Payne, whom Sarah kills shortly after. Meachum cryptically implies he is not the only politician who works for "the Haves" and arrogantly tells Swagger to give up. Deducing that the proof will get them murdered as witnesses, Swagger destroys the recording as the FBI arrives to arrest him.

Swagger requests a plea hearing with US Attorney General Russert. With Memphis's assistance, Swagger discloses that his unattended rifles, including the supposed murder weapon, have all had their firing pins replaced with slightly shorter ones, practically making them unusable dry-firing props. Johnson's men had stolen the rifle (unaware of Swagger's subtle temperings), retrieved a previous fired practice bullet and paper-patched it for the Mutumbo's assassination, as part of the setup to frame Swagger. Swagger's name is cleared, and Memphis also provides Russert with evidence cataloging Johnson's involvement in the village massacre and other crimes, but Johnson cannot be arrested since his crimes fall outside U.S. jurisdiction. Privately, Russert casually hints that extrajudicial measures may be necessary to address the corruption before ordering Swagger's release.

Boasting impunity at a private gathering, Meachum, Johnson and their associates discuss their next operation, but Swagger suddenly attacks the villa and kills them all. He ruptures the house's gas line, frames the dead Johnson as the assailant, and leaves just as the place is engulfed in a massive gas explosion. Swagger and Sarah then drive off together.

Cast

• Mark Wahlberg as Gunnery Sergeant Bob Lee Swagger
• Michael Peña as FBI Special Agent Nick Memphis
• Danny Glover as Colonel Isaac Johnson
• Kate Mara as Sarah Fenn
• Elias Koteas as Jack Payne
• Rhona Mitra as FBI Special Agent Alourdes Galindo
• Jonathan Walker as Louis Dobbler, Meachum's aide
• Louis Ferreira as FBI Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge Howard Purnell
• Tate Donovan as FBI Special Agent Russ Turner
• Rade Šerbedžija as Mikhayo Sczerbiak / Michael Sandor
• Alan C. Peterson as Philadelphia Police Department Officer Stanley Timmons
• Ned Beatty as Senator Charles F. Meachum
• Lane Garrison as Lance Corporal Donnie Fenn
• Brian Markinson as Attorney General Russert
• Levon Helm as Mr. Rate

Production

Development

Wahlberg at the London premiere for Shooter

The novel Point of Impact was in development first at Universal and later at Paramount for twelve years, with seven screenwriters attempting many adaptations. The author Stephen Hunter also tried to adapt the book but was put off by the experience and disconnected himself from the process. In 2000, William Friedkin agreed to direct the film with Tommy Lee Jones starring as Bob Lee Swagger. However, the writers were unable to complete a script, and Friedkin and Jones to decide to make The Hunted (2003) instead. That film incorporated many of Friedkin's ideas for Shooter, and its protagonist L.T. Bonham was also based on Jones's planned portrayal of Swagger. Friedkin expressed interest in additionally directing Shooter as a sequel to The Hunted, but ultimately did not.

Jonathan Lemkin read the book and some of the previous drafts and was able to avoid repeating some of the same mistakes. Lemkin updated the story away from the original post Vietnam setting, and restructured the story bringing the main event to the end of the first act, and to cut the multiple plot lines down to just the A story. His page 1 rewrite of the screenplay attracted Wahlberg and Fuqua, and on his second draft, the film got the green light to go into production. Unusual for a screenplay with such a long development process and multiple rewrites, Lemkin retained sole credit after Writers Guild of America arbitration.

Locations

Most of the film was shot on location in New Westminster, Kamloops, Mission, Ashcroft and Cache Creek in British Columbia, Canada. For example, Swagger's escape was filmed in New Westminster along the Fraser River, standing in for the Delaware River. The car chase that ends when it plunged into the river was filmed down 6th Street and off the Westminster Quay. The following scene of Swagger clinging to the side of a dredger was also filmed on the Fraser River near the Pattullo Bridge.

The assassination scenes were filmed in Independence National Historical Park in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. The sniper location was created from using the exteriors of the church steeple at the junction of New Street and North 4th Street and combining them with an elevated view from another building to create a fictional vista of the park. The final scene was in Mammoth Lakes, California, in the lakes basin.

The mountaintop confrontation was shot on the glaciers of Rainbow Mountain, near the resort town of Whistler, British Columbia.

Weapons and tactics

Shooter depicts a number of sniper tactics, thanks to the guidance of former US Marine scout sniper Patrick Garrity, who trained Mark Wahlberg for the film. Garrity taught Wahlberg to shoot both left- and right-handed (the actor is left-handed), as he had to switch shooting posture throughout the movie, due to Swagger's sustained injuries. He was also trained to adjust a weapon's scope, judge effects of wind on a shot, do rapid bolt manipulation, and develop special breathing skills. His training included extreme distance shooting up to 1,100 yards (1,000 m), and the use of camouflage ghillie suits. Fuqua appointed Garrity as the film's military-technical advisor.

In the special features of the DVD, Garrity is interviewed pointing out that the shot fired in the assassination would not have hit the archbishop straight on, as in the film. When a round is fired it will fall from 30 to 40 feet (9 to 10 m) depending on the distance of the shot. To compensate, the round is fired at an arc calibrated by how far the round is going to fall, the distance of the shot, temperature, humidity, and wind. In his interview, Garrity said "At 2 yards (1.8 m), because of the hydrostatic shock that follows a large-caliber, high-velocity round such as the .408 Chey Tac (which is used in the shot), the target would literally be peeled apart and limbs would be flying 200 feet (60 m) away." The exit wound on the archbishop's head would have been too extreme to show in movie theaters. Instead, the movie depicts a much less graphic representation of the assassination.

Throughout the film, Swagger uses an array of sniper rifles, including the USMC M40A3, the CheyTac Intervention, and the Barrett M82.

Music

The score to the film was composed by Mark Mancina, who recorded the music at the Todd-AO Scoring Stage in Studio City, Los Angeles, using a 77-piece orchestra conducted by Don Harper. A score soundtrack was released by Lakeshore Records and co-published by Shoelace Music on March 27, 2007. The song "Nasty Letter" by Otis Taylor plays over the end of the film and credits.

Reception

Box office

Shooter grossed $47 million in the US and Canada and $48.7 million in other territories, for a total gross of $95.7 million against its $61 million production budget.

The film grossed $14.5 million in its opening weekend, finishing in 3rd at the box office behind TMNT ($24.3 million) and 300 ($19.9 million).

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 47% based on 152 reviews. The site's critics consensus reads, "With an implausible story and numerous plot holes, Shooter fails to distinguish itself from other mindless action-thrillers." Metacritic assigns the film a weighted average score of 53 out of 100, based on 33 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.

Manohla Dargis of The New York Times called the film "a thoroughly reprehensible, satisfyingly violent entertainment about men and guns and things that go boom." Dargis described director Fuqua's technique as overshot and overedited, but said he has a knack for chaos and the result is "pretty enjoyable." Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter gave a positive review but was critical of the weak characterization: "If the movie only lavished as much thought and care on its characters as it does on each intricate set piece, Shooter might have been a classic." Honeycutt says the problem is the screenplay by Jonathan Lemkin, and the source novel Point of Impact by film critic and author Stephen Hunter. He highlighted Peña for his performance, and praised the technical aspects of the film, particularly the stunt work, and the camera work of Peter Menzies Jr. Tony Horkins of Empire magazine praised the movie: "The sequel-ready Swagger challenges Bourne's supremacy with an impressive shoot-'em-up, work-it-out action drama".

Some film critics saw the film as left-leaning in its politics, including arguing that the main villain (Senator Meachum) is an analogy for then Vice President Dick Cheney.

Home media

The DVD was released on June 26, 2007, reaching the top of the US sales charts. The film earned $57.6 million in DVD sales in the North America. Paramount Movies released the film on 4k Ultra HD Blu-ray on March 15, 2022.

TV series

In 2016, USA Network picked up a series of the same name based on the movie, with Wahlberg as a producer and Ryan Phillippe as Swagger.

See also

• American Sniper
• Sniper (1993 film)
• Assassinations in fiction
• Shooter, an American television series

External links

• Official website
• Shooter at IMDb
• Shooter at the TCM Movie Database
• Shooter at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
• Shooter at Rotten Tomatoes
• Shooter at Metacritic
• Shooter at Box Office Mojo