Shooter 2007

Peter Debruge, Miami Herald: The movie's politics may miss their mark, but its thrills are dead-on. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: [A] competent if uninspired action thriller. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: For years Wahlberg has been turning into a real actor, and if he ever gets the action hero role he deserves, we'll let you know. Read more

Manohla Dargis, New York Times: Muscles bulge and heads explode in this thoroughly reprehensible, satisfyingly violent entertainment about men and guns and things that go boom. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: This is the first big-studio action picture (the director is Antoine Fuqua) with some of the disgusted, bloody nihilism of the post-Vietnam era. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: The story is often ridiculous, but director Antoine Fuqua provides plenty of fun distractions, including an evil Russian in a wheelchair, a conniving U.S. senator, and a heroine who favors tank tops. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: Shooter's covert intent could have been satire. Overtly, though, it's definitely about shooting, betrayal and shooting. In that order. Read more

Bob Thomas, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Mark Wahlberg will only get props for balancing out the utter implausibility of [Antoine] Fuqua's new crash-boom conspiracy melodrama Shooter. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: As the body count increases, the kills become so gratuitous that the effect is numbing, like watching a line of metal ducks get pinged at the state fair. Read more

Bill Muller, Arizona Republic: Begins with a semblance of rationality, then flies off the rails, plunging into a series of bloody shootouts and pointless explosions. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: A stylish but essentially businesslike smash-and-crasher. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: Shooter is executed with such efficiency and energy by action maestro Antoine Fuqua that ignoring flaws and becoming involved in the proceedings isn't a matter of choice. Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: A sleek, scattershot and vigorously incoherent vigilante flick that assumes the high ground just long enough to slay every corrupt dirt-ball in its path. Read more

Michael Booth, Denver Post: Shooter boasts a likable hero and the possibility of a sequel, and Hollywood rarely asks for a more storybook ending than that. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: The ultimate crime of this paranoid enemy-of-the-state pulp, directed with more style than brains by Antoine Fuqua, is how dull it is. Read more

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: Director Antoine Fuqua and screenwriter Jonathan Lemkin have let a perfectly good political action thriller get completely and ridiculously away from them. Read more

Tom Maurstad, Dallas Morning News: Director Antoine Fuqua knows how to stage and shoot scenes of violence and chaos so that they build without ever bubbling over into absurdity. Read more

Scott Foundas, L.A. Weekly: A generically titled studio action picture that turns out to be a surprisingly deft satire about Americans' loss of faith in their government following the 2000 election, the 9/11 attacks and the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Read more

Bruce Newman, San Jose Mercury News: Shooter won't win any Oscars, but it has blood and brains, and even some heart. They're splattered all over the screen. Read more

Gene Seymour, Newsday: Shooter eventually gets in its own way by hitting things too hard, too loud and too long. Read more

David Denby, New Yorker: The engaging, fast-talking idiosyncrasy of [Wahlberg's] performance in The Departed has vanished. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: It's best to turn your brain off, half an hour in. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: The plot is so dense and cockamamie, trying to follow it isn't worth the bother. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: Though the movie has some mild pretensions to rank with great paranoia films like Three Days of the Condor, mostly it's content to deliver Salisbury steak-and-mashed-potatoes action. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: It features a gritty, macho performance by Mark Wahlberg, stinging political commentary and more 'Here's how you do that' moments than the complete MacGuyver collection on DVD. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: A chase movie and a pretty crafty thriller, Shooter owes a lot to Sydney Pollack's Three Days of the Condor. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Even in a climate where the pervasive influence of 24 can be argued to have caused 'thriller fatigue,' Shooter is worth the price of admission. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: Shooter is far more complicated than it needs to be, taking more crazy twists and turns than it should. Read more

Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle: The crushing two-hour-plus running time and Tom Clancy-for-dummies plot sabotage the film, which becomes particularly ridiculous in the last 30 minutes. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: Though much of the action in Shooter is beautifully photographed, the movie's force is as a blunt instrument of metaphor. Read more

Bill Zwecker, Chicago Sun-Times: While it's fast-paced and often something of a nail-biter, Shooter doesn't really pay off, other than merely give us a lot of action, merely for action's sake. Read more

Stephen Cole, Globe and Mail: Like most modern action films, Shooter is too explicit, more interested in mayhem than motive. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: It may not qualify as a masterpiece, yet is a masterful thriller nonetheless. Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: Shooter is an honorable rather than exceptional addition to the canon. Read more

Ben Walters, Time Out: The film's weird, thin politics become harder to swallow as it lurches from set-up to set-up. Read more

David Fear, Time Out: Ballistic fetishists and anticorporate activists will find common ground in each violent act against political fat cats, but the rest of us are left to wallow in the bloodlust and wonder who switched the reels. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Despite gripping chase sequences and a few awe-inspiring fiery explosions, gaping holes in the convoluted plot make Shooter heavier on style than substance. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: Its skeptical, disillusioned take on big government and official deceptions should strike a vibrant chord with a wide range of audiences. Read more

Variety: Read more

Scott Eyman, Washington Post: It's a story that can be transplanted from genre to genre, because we never grow tired of it, which is to say that it fits snugly into the paranoid drift of American movies, and the value we place on one honest man with a gun. Read more