by rick grant rickgrant01@comcast.net
B Rated R 134 min
In this thriller, Mark Wahlberg stars as a former Marine Corp. sniper, Bob Lee Swagger, who is assigned to the CIA’s special forces operations. When a black ops mission goes bad and his partner is killed, he is honorably discharged from the Marines and heads to a remote mountain cabin to find peace with his dog and nature.
Swagger’s peaceful existence is interrupted when a sinister looking group of powerful men visit him. The rogue agents are headed by a U.S. Senator (Ned Beatty) and Colonel Isaac Johnson (Danny Glover). They operate outside of Judicial and Constitutional mandates to run black ops with private armies and pull off political assassinations. The group’s motives involve oil money and absolute power.
Colonel Johnson recruits Swagger to scout out a suspected presidential assassination attempt and advise the secret service on the best location and vantage point that the assassin would set-up his shooting position. However, Swagger is being set-up as a patsy to take the rap for the real assassin who is planning to murder the President of the United States during a ceremony with the Archbishop of Ethiopia.
Clearly, the rogue agents underestimated Swagger, who is not only an expert sniper but has had special forces training in survival and advanced tactics. The assassination goes down but the shooter misjudged the windage factor and hit the Archbishop instead of the President. The rogue agents identify the assassin as Swagger and he is being chased by every law enforcement agency in the tri-state area.
Swagger steals a truck and heads for Kentucky, where his dead partner’s widow, Sarah Fenn (Kate Mara), lives. He takes a chance that she will help him.
During Swagger’s run for freedom, he had encountered an FBI agent, Nick Memphis (Michael Pena) who he disarms but tells him he did not kill the president. At that time, he didn’t know the killer missed the president. Going on instinct and adrenalin, Swagger reaches out to Nick Memphis in hopes of gaining an ally inside the Bureau.
Directed by Antoine Fuqua and adapted to screen by Jonathan Lemkin from Stephen Hunter’s novel Point of Impact, the premise is based on the viewers accepting the existence of a shadow government of powerful, wealthy men who have Senators and other VIPs in their pockets. Allegedly, these are the men who conspired to shoot JFK and setup Lee Harvey Oswald to take the fall. They have important worldwide contacts and operate as a secret society of members who make things happen for their empowerment and to gain unimaginable wealth. In other words, Hunter’s story ties all the conspiracy theories together into a sinister secret organization that operates way outside the law and the Constitution. In fact, in the script, Colonel Isaac Johnson tells Swagger “I’m untouchable, I will win and you will lose!” He and the Senator have so many top government officials in their pockets, he is right–he is untouchable. Ah, but they never dreamed that Swagger would survive and come back to haunt them. He was not about to let wwhat these evil men did to him go unpunished. So he plots his revenge with the help of Sarah and Agent Memphis.
This film delivers intrigue and realistic gun scenes for serious action junkies. I liked it because it didn’t pretend to be anything but what it is–a spy thriller with teeth. The scenario goes for the jugular and never lets the momentum wane. If you believe in the unified conspiracy theory that alleges there is a shadow government pulling strings and assassinations to accomplish its agenda, then this is a must-see movie. When Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested he said he was a patsy and I believe him. It’s something to ponder.
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