Shooter scores

We were just talking about big, dumb action films. Shooter is smarter than that.

It's an action film, all right, starring Mark Wahlberg as Man Lee Swagger, a trained sniper who loses his buddy to friendly fire on a secret mission in Ethiopia. He retires to the backwoods, but Col. Danny Glover convinces him to come out of retirement to shoot the president. Um, only, make-believe. For the good of the country.

At this point, I think Swagger is not so bright, but actually, Wahlberg is playing him cagey. However, it does come as a surprise when the president is shot and Swagger is set up for it.

The movie's politics are interesting. It is taken for granted that America tortures people, invades countries for oil and is run by corrupt senators like Ned Beatty. But that's only the contractors - the Marines and the FBI are clean (just a little slow to catch on). This is epitomized by FBI agent Mark Pena, a dopey kid fresh out of Academy who is clobbered by Swagger, but believes he is innocent.

The directing is pretty sweet. It slows down when it needs to - snipering involves a lot of waiting, not a lot of car chases. It takes on a dreamlike quality sometimes that is rather poetic. There are a lot of helicopters, though. About par for an action film.

Mark Wahlberg is great, good looking, ripped body, deep and sensitive - that's why I think these movies are chick flicks. Plenty for the ladies to look at. I'm not sure whether he can act; mostly he just has to furrow his brow. But he certainly sells this part.

But that's not what I came to talk about. I wanted to see this movie because it has Levon Helm in a small role. Helm was the drummer for the Band and sang songs like "The Weight" and "Cripple Creek". He had a recent bout with throat cancer that could have silenced him, but he has come back to sing a whole album of old timey songs like "Poor Old Dirt Farmer". He never had a smooth voice, but now it is rough as the Arkansas hills he was born in.

In Shooter, he plays the greatest gunsmith in the world. He lives in the backwoods, looks toothless and is near blind, but sharp as a tack. Well read on all the high-tech 1890's tricks and so on. It's a great role, he performs it beautifully, it's worth the whole movie for this one scene, and by the way, it turns out to have nothing to do with anything. Swagger just wanted to nail down an minor detail in the plot that doesn't implicate or exonerate anyone, and isn't mentioned again.

OK, this would have been a decent movie without Levon. With him, it is awesome.

By the way, Helm is the coal miner in Coal Miner's Daughter.