? A US special-forces marksman (Mark Wahlberg), hired to thwart a presidential assassination, winds up a target of the would-be killers. Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) directed Jonathan Lemkin’s adaptation of the Stephen Hunter novel.
+ I was into this movie for the first half, although I figured out who the villains were. (No big deal, as that gets revealed early.) Here we see the hero display all the tricks of his trade. Like so many criminals, he figures out that Philly is a good place to kill someone and get away with it, so the pivotal scenes take place around Independence Hall, and there’s some impressive aerial footage of the city. With the help of one of the feds and a schoolteacher, he takes on platoons of unfriendly types with just some household items. The main appeal, besides huge explosions, is watching the lone wolf use his superior training to outwit and outfight everyone.
- An exciting setup, but both the premise and the outcome become implausible, then absurd, as the movie goes on. The villains are so cartoonishly evil that I was expecting one of them to shout “Bwa-ha-ha-ha!” One actually does say, “I win; you lose.” Twice. But by then the movie has descended into trite formula.
= **3/4 Worth a look for shoot-’em-up fans and conspiracy-movie buffs. Sort of similar to The Sentinel, which is a better movie.
IMDB link
reviewed 3/29/07
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