Free «Shooter» Essay

In recent years, Hollywood films exhibited very different genres to their audience: fiction, adventures, thrillers, and horror films. All these genres somehow are filled with action game, but with all the tinsel of crazy special effects of “The Matrix” and “Lord of the Rings”, a good old thriller – a genre that was literally dominating on the screens during the 90's – has remained surprisingly forgotten. The departure of Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Van Damme from a scene as if buried them deep beneath the earth and diminished such a genre of a movie. However, the new film by Antoine Fuqua “Shooter” has revived the action from the ashes of oblivion: shooting, crazy dynamics, massacres and a very happy ending – it will all be waiting for those who go to the cinema to get this pure pleasure.

The active life of the U.S. civil society could not put aside a crew of “Shooter” with its director. That is why fashionable pacifist themes were raised in the film with admirable tenacity, but the approach to them is very superficial and unnecessary. Two U.S. Army snipers talk about the role of “peacekeepers”. The U.S. Attorney General brings a total nonsense about criminal jurisdiction of the other characters, and says that it would be necessary to stop the war. Still, their political demands are openly declared. Basically, all intellectual and analytical ideas in “Shooter” are extremely topical and artificial, but the battle actions will please the true connoisseurs of action very much. The plot of the film is very simple: an American warrior is substituted by a bullet; later he comes back and takes revenge. However, this tedious theme is presented in a completely different manner. Bobby Lee Suegger is not just killing his enemies with wielding martial arts technique of the U.S. special forces, or with a good old gun (no matter which one), but he simply massacres his foes with a minimum distance of 180 meters – it looks unrealistically spectacular and beautiful. This is special technique which implies that justice will still be settled. This distance emphasizes that there is a gap between issues: peace cannot be achieved through killing.

In “Shooter” the American “peacekeepers” (as wittily remarked at the beginning: where there are people called “peacekeepers”, there never will be peace) ruthlessly mowed the local population whose scattered villages prevented the construction of the strategically important Eritrean pipelines. Seemingly a usual good old thriller presents an extremely important for understanding reality of the historical process. In front of the audience the author unfolds a machine of “power and money accumulation” which grinds everything and everyone (including human bones in a literal sense) for petrodollar profits and leaves its key links in the upper echelons of power. “Everything is based on human weakness”, explains the magic U.S. Army social system one of the corrupt bosses.

What is more, this plot story is, as if linked to the U.S. president's story, almost half a century old, when another amateur shooting by Lee Harvey Oswald (whose name is suspiciously alike to Bob's) took place with the President Kennedy. Of course, Kennedy died for real, but the fact he was killed by Oswald was refuted by all independent from the official authorities’ examinations. Among other things, the trick with the “set up” is anagrammatically close to Oswald Sueggera’s plain text explaining a brilliant episode with a consultant on small arms.

As stated in the film, in this country to be a patriot means to wear a sticker “anti-patriot”. On one hand, people face a standard action, not gone away from all other representatives of the genre. But on the other hand, this movie is surprisingly honest and truthful. The film, which is not covered with corny American patriotism, shows the world the way it is. For this, “Shooter” is worthy to be respected. This movie is a rare case of the American film industry, where patriotism and love for the country, whatever it may be, are authentic. This is a film whose creators realized that in order to win, internal enemies should be conquered in the first place. These enemies disguised as honest citizens. “Shooter” is dynamic, like all fighters. Leading actors are convincing, setting is qualitative. However, viewer should not bypass “Shooter” to their attention, because this is a movie where the authors are really not afraid to tell the truth. This is the truth about a policy which is primarily money and power. A country with such a policy loses goals; and that is when real people become these goals.