Marksman Bob Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg) leaves the military after a mission goes horribly awry. Pressed back into service, he is betrayed, again. Now, wounded and the subject of a massive manhunt, Swagger plots revenge against some of the most powerful individuals in the nation.

By Owen Gleiberman

In Shooter, Mark Wahlberg, as a former Marine sniper, is brought out of retirement to take out a would-be presidential assassin. It is, however, all a big setup, in a plot that recycles the murder of JFK and the sins of Dick Cheney without becoming remotely plausible or unpredictable. The ultimate crime of this paranoid enemy-of-the-state pulp, directed with more style than brains by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day), is how dull it is. Once the conspiracy is revealed, there's still 90 minutes of manhunt to go, with Wahlberg, in blank-slate mode, reduced to Rambo in the concrete jungle. C-