In an effort to report something, anything that isn’t speculative garble on who might win each category of the Golden Globes (Variety, we’re looking in your direction), pretty much all there is today is the landing of the first trailer for The Shooter. You can see it here.
Yes, Antoine Fuqua, that director with the very definition of an up and down career (delivering both **Training Day **and King Arthur) is almost ready to release his next effort into the world, and it looks pretty slick.
There’s a great exchange of dialogue in the first Lethal Weapon movie, where Riggs talks about how killing people was the only thing he was ever good at. There’s a similar conversation in this trailer, only not quite as good. Coincidentally though, it does have Danny Glover doing the other half of the talking. Mark Wahlberg plays Bob Lee Swagger, a retired military marksman (the best, of course), who has been living the quiet life in a remote mountain cabin, until he is sought out by Colonel Johnson (Glover) to prevent an assassination attempt on the life of the President. Of course, it all goes tits up, and Swagger realises he’s been framed, but escapes, goes into hiding, and sets out on the trail of those responsible.
Swagger seems to be part Jason Bourne, part John Rambo, and the whole shebang is typically well put together by Fuqua (keep an eye out for the agent with the remote detonator – very cool shot), but like Live Free Or Die Hard, there’s the now seemingly mandatory shot of a huge American flag, maing the whole thing reek of jingoism. Still, if we’re lucky, that could be the only such shot in the film, and if we’re really, really lucky, Fuqua will have moved away from the ‘golly gee whiz, aren’t we great’ stance of Tears Of The Sun.
On a related note, if you want to see something really strange, go to the IMDB and instead of searching for Shooter, type in The Shooter. It’ll give you a Wesley Snipes film with an almost identical plot summary. Most curious.