BEFORE: I've got a little extra time this Memorial Day weekend - who am I kidding, I've got a LOT of extra time this Memorial Day weekend, but before I just waste it doing laundry and clearing some old episodes of "Chopped" from the DVR, I wonder if I shouldn't be making better use of it, like should I be searching for documentaries to add to the chain at the last minute? My wife said there's a new one about the Beach Boys, should I see if it fits into the mix, or just hold it for next year? Maybe I should be taking a look at the horror films on my list, to see if there's a way to tie enough of them together for October, or should I be looking for more of those, too, to fill in the gaps? Once I start doing this (in-between laundry loads), well, there goes the weekend, most likely. I have to be at the theater on Tuesday afternoon, but at least it's going to be a short week. And then the big film festival month kicks off on June 1 with NewFest, and then the Tribeca Film Festival follows a couple weeks later. So whatever I need to do to feel all caught up, I'd better do it now.
Mark Wahlberg carries over again from "Pain & Gain", after just one more film he'll be in first place for the year, with 6 appearances.
THE PLOT: A marksman living in exile is coaxed back into action after hearing of a plot to kill the President. After being double-crossed for the attempt and going on the run, he sets out for the real killer and the truth.
AFTER: Well, at least this has a more coherent story than "The Big Hit" did, that film was a total mess. I understood what was happening here, up to a certain point anyway. About 2/3 through there was this minor character who suddenly became super important, and he had this really complex origin story, and I totally didn't understand how it fit into the big picture. That's on me, maybe, but I have a feeling it was very important to the overall story arc, and yet I didn't get it at all. Anyway, I should start from the beginning, probably.
Bob Lee Swagger (great character name, BTW) is a former Marine scout sniper who we first see doing long-distance recon for a secret U.S. mission in Ethiopia. They protect the convoy from far away by taking out the local scouts, which is helpful since the U.S. force isn't supposed to be there at all, so naturally they can't be seen by anyone. But then the enemy forces show up in greater numbers, they deduce the sniper's position, or try to, from the direction of the bullets, and meanwhile the U.S. forces scatter back over the border, leaving Swagger and his spotter, Donnie, behind. Which seems like a shitty thing for the military to do, whatever happened to "Leave no man behind"? Well, the intel never said anything about helicopters, I guess.
Donnie the spotter is killed by the Ethiopians, but sniper Swagger manages to survive, and we next see him three years later, living alone with his dog in the mountains of Wyoming. We can presume he's no longer in the military, but who knows if that discharge was honorable or dishonorable, guess it doesn't much matter. One day the men in black roll up to his mountain hideout and request his help, it seems there's been a threat against the President, and they need Swagger's sniper expertise to figure out which of the three cities the President will be appearing in soon might be the most vulnerable location. In other words, if Swagger were to plan an assassination attempt, how and where might he do it? Sure, this sounds mighty fishy from the jump, but Col. Johnson guilts him into helping out, because if he turns on the TV next week and sees that the President got shot, he'll feel guilty for not having prevented the attack. Umm, sure.
Swagger checks out the three venues in the three cities and determines that the only vulnerable event is the one in Philadelphia. There's a tall church tower within sniping distance of Independence Hall, and sure, it would take an expert sniper, someone who could take all the factors into account - the wind, the distance, the amount a bullet drops over that distance, the curvature of the Earth, gravity, etc. He knows HE could make the shot, meaning that there must be only a handful of snipers on the planet who could also make that shot, if they were at the same level at him. At this point, if you don't see the twist coming, well, jeez, I can't help you. I'd already figured out that the government was using this guy to PLAN the assassination, not prevent it. But Swagger figures it out just a bit too late, that they'd been planning to frame him for the job, then shoot him Jack Ruby style.
Yeah, this all seems just a bit too "Lee Harvey Oswald", doesn't it? OK, there's no grassy knoll, no motorcade, no secret CIA training in Havana, but the idea is generally the same - take out the President and then pin it on one sniper who made a seemingly impossible shot, then make sure that the sniper dies so there's no denial of what "happened", then kill the guy who shot him, and bingo, no loose ends. Except they shoot Swagger and he manages to get away - did they forget this guy managed to escape from the entire Ethiopian army? He survives, that's what he does.
Swagger steals a car from a clueless FBI agent (to be fair, it's Nick Memphis' first week on the job) and drives off to find a place to hide out, plus some medical supplies for his gunshot wound. Changes his clothes, changes his look, changes cars a few times, and then he can't exactly go home, so he heads to Kentucky, where spotter Donnie's widow lives. He remembers she was training to be a nurse, and that's exactly what he needs. Meanwhile the FBI, the police, and even the Coast Guard are searching for him, but that clueless FBI agent starts to figure out that the facts in the case don't seem to add up, plus the FBI keeps telling him what to put in his report, even though it doesn't really match what happened.
Turns out the President wasn't shot, but the Ethiopian Archbishop that was his guest got killed. Hmm, Ethiopia, where have we heard that country name before? Swagger sets out to clear his name, but to do that he needs the help of that FBI agent who's starting to figure out that Swagger didn't pull the trigger. But then, who did? To find out, they need to go down the conspiracy rabbit hole and visit this guy in Tennessee who seems to know everything about firearms, assassinations, faking ballistic matches, and not only can he tell you who else could have made that shot, but also what they each had for breakfast. I guess this is where the plot kind of got away from me, because this "expert" spoke so cryptically that maybe I didn't pick up on his clues. Since this guy also thinks the CIA killed Kennedy and the moon landing was faked, I didn't realize I was supposed to take him seriously.
OK, no more spoilers here, but I had to read the plot summary on WIkipedia to figure out all of the connections to a particular Senator, the oil industry, and the mission that Swagger almost didn't survive. But essentially Swagger and Memphis have to work their way back up the chain of command to get back to where this whole thing started, with a mountaintop shoot-out between the good snipers and the bad snipers, and then Swagger still has to prove to the Attorney General that he didn't try to assassinate the U.S. President. Yeah, good luck with that, and watch your back, because the FBI or CIA can still send someone to kill you, and then once again you'll be unable to deny your involvement.
Swagger should have remembered what President George W. Bush once said, which was, "Fool me once, shame on....shame on me. You fool me, can't get fooled again!" Ohh, so close, George.
Really, just one big NITPICK POINT tonight, and it's that the film asks me to believe that this sniper can be an expert on ballistics, survival and military tactics, but yet he couldn't figure out what the government could do with all of the information he was supplying to them about how to carry out an assassination. I mean, I GUESS it's a good cover story that they were just trying to learn how an assassin thinks to prevent one, but come on.
Also starring Michael Peña (last seen in "Extinction"), Danny Glover (last seen in "Proud Mary"), Kate Mara (last seen in "Happythankyoumoreplease"), Elias Koteas (last seen in "The Last Days on Mars"), Rhona Mitra (last seen in "Game Over, Man!"), Jonathan Walker (last seen in "The Thing" (2011)), Louis Ferreira (last seen in "Naked Lunch"), Tate Donovan (last seen in "Worth"), Rade Serbedzja (also last seen in "Proud Mary"), Alan C. Peterson (last seen in "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed"), Ned Beatty (last seen in "Prelude to a Kiss"), Lane Garrison, Brian Markinson (last seen in "Frankie & Alice"), Michael St. John Smith (last seen in "The Core"), Dean McKenzie, Tom Butler (last seen in "Code Name: The Cleaner"), Adrian G. Griffiths (last seen in "X-Men: Apocalypse"), Darrin Massey, Mackenzie Gray (last seen in "Warcraft"), Levon Helm (last seen in "Bitchin': The Sound and Fury of Rick James"), Rebecca Toolan (last seen in "Bad Times at the El Royale"), Trish Allen, John Tench, David Bloom (last seen in "Okja"), Brad Kelly (last seen in "Peter Pan & Wendy"), David Neale, Anthony McCrae, Chic Gibson, Fred Keating (last seen in "Walking Tall" (2004)).
RATING: 6 out of 10 firing pins
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