Movie Review by Neils Hesse
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Michael Pena, Danny Glover, Kate Mara, Elias Koteas
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Everybody’s got a price, it might not be financial but if you read them well enough you’ll know just what buttons to press to get them going, men and women have been doing it for years in what’s popularly known as the battle of the sexes. Unfortunately for Bob Lee Swaggar, an expert retired sniper, his weakness is his respect for good old Uncle Sam. He gets pulled back into the arena of counter intelligence under the guise of helping to thwart an assassination attempt on a world leader, but then quicker that you can whisper “Jack Ruby”, Swaggar finds himself bleeding, on the run and being hunted by everybody from your local beat cop to the dudes in the suits!
Okay I know it all sounds familiar and yeah it is, but hey you can take any old storyline and turn it into a thrilling movie or you can take a great storyline and make a version of paint drying! This is a back to basics action thriller – good guy gets set up, good guy’s left for dead or dying, good guy ups the ante and does some heavy butt kicking! Fuqua does a solid job here keeping the movie simple and giving the audience exactly what they expect. In addition Wahlberg physically fits the profile and does very little but manages to easily project the lethal loner who will one minute be all cuddly with his dog and in the next executing an unarmed man without batting an eyelid!
Maybe not much of a girls’ movie but any red-blooded man ought to be more than satisfied!
