Now Playing
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

sort by name

sort by score

38 12 Rounds
48 17 Again
76 Adventureland
48 Angels & Demons
54 Battle for Terra
xx Bruno
80 Coraline
40 Dance Flick
83 Drag Me to Hell
72 Earth
45 Fast & Furious
61 Fighting
34 Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
72 Gran Torino
73 Hangover, The
47 Hannah Montana: The Movie
51 Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
54 Imagine That
41 Knowing
32 Land of the Lost
56 Monsters vs. Aliens
34 My Life in Ruins
51 My Sister's Keeper
46 Next Day Air
42 Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
54 Observe and Report
25 Obsessed
48 Proposal, The
70 Public Enemies
61 Soloist, The
83 Star Trek
64 State of Play
55 Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, The
52 Terminator Salvation
35 Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
77 Under the Sea 3D
88 Up
43 X-Men Origins: Wolverine
34 Year One

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

sort by name

sort by score

67 $9.99
75 24 City
66 Adoration
74 Afghan Star
48 Alien Trespass
56 American Violet
82 Anvil! The Story of Anvil
57 Away We Go
81 Beaches of Agnes, The
62 Big Man Japan
28 Big Shot-Caller, The
78 Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
55 Brothers Bloom, The
82 Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
xx Call of the Wild
63 Cheri
62 Cherry Blossoms
63 Dead Snow
65 Departures
18 Downloading Nancy
58 Easy Virtue
70 End of the Line, The
77 Every Little Step
64 Examined Life
80 Food, Inc.
38 Gigantic
56 Girl from Monaco, The
67 Girlfriend Experience, The
87 Gomorrah
89 Goodbye Solo
63 Great Buck Howard, The
79 Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
xx Home
82 Hunger
91 Hurt Locker, The
16 I Hate Valentine's Day
81 Il Divo
54 Is Anybody There?
71 Jerichow
58 Julia
74 Lemon Tree
36 Life is Hot in Cracktown
40 Limits of Control, The
42 Little Ashes
64 Lymelife
50 Management
57 Merry Gentleman, The
66 Moon
35 New York
62 Not Forgotten
xx Offshore
78 O'Horten
64 Outrage
40 Paris 36
54 Pontypool
71 Pressure Cooker
52 Quiet Chaos
83 Revanche
67 Rudo y Cursi
86 Seraphine
65 Sex Positive
70 Shall We Kiss?
77 Sin Nombre
59 Sleep Dealer
74 Song of Sparrows, The
54 Stoning of Soraya M., The
82 Sugar
84 Summer Hours
61 Sunshine Cleaning
28 Surveillance
42 Tennessee
63 Tetro
64 Throw Down Your Heart
80 Tokyo Sonata
63 Tokyo!
70 Tony Manero
74 Treeless Mountain
88 Tulpan
74 Two Lovers
83 Tyson
83 U2 3D
60 Under Our Skin
69 Unmistaken Child
69 Valentino: The Last Emperor
22 What Goes Up
45 Whatever Works
57 Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Shooter
Paramount Pictures


7.5

based on 33 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 72 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for strong graphic violence and some language

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Michael Peña, Danny Glover, Kate Mara, Elias Koteas, Rhona Mitra, Jonathan Walker, and Justin Louis

Shooter is an edgy, non-stop action thriller about an honorable and brilliant marksman (Wahlberg) who finds himself in an unthinkable situation: framed as a Presidential assassin. Plunged into a shocking vortex of terror and conspiracy, the rogue shooter discovers the race is on to prove his innocence even as he is pursued by every law enforcement agency in the country, as well as a shadowy organization on a relentless manhunt aimed at destroying the secrets he has uncovered. (Paramount Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Action \| Drama \| Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Jonathan Lemkin Stephen Hunter (novel Point of Impact)
DIRECTED BY:	Antoine Fuqua
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: June 26, 2007 Theatrical: March 23, 2007
RUNNING TIME:	122 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Village Voice Scott Foundas

Shooter is a generically titled studio action picture that turns out to be a surprisingly deft satire about Americans' loss of faith in their government following the 2000 election, the 9/11 attacks, and the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Shooter does what any good thriller should accomplish - it thrills. It's fast-paced, energetic, and doesn't follow a path that seems pre-ordained from the beginning.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Wahlberg acquits himself well, and the supporting cast -- which includes pioneering rocker Levon Helm in a scene-stealing cameo as an aging gun buff who knows a thing or two about cover-ups, Ned Beatty as a corrupt politician, and a Strangelovian Rade Serbedzija -- is so strong you almost wish the film were longer so they could have more screen time.

Miami Herald Peter Debruge

The movie's politics may miss their mark, but its thrills are dead-on.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Unravels a bit heading toward its finale, as buildings explode and characters are forced to explain themselves and their nefarious motives. But the payoff at the end - at once kind of radical and gratuitous - delivers a wallop.

Time Richard Corliss

Wahlberg could be the actor that action movies have been looking for since Sly, Arnold, Harrison, Bruce, Jackie and Jean-Claude -- all in their 50s or 60s -- got too old to execute the leg lifts necessary to kick bad guys in the butt.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

If the movie only lavished as much thought and care on its characters as it does on each intricate set piece, Shooter might have been a classic.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Carrying Shooter through its difficulties is, finally, not its crisp action sequences and definitely not the torture. It's Wahlberg's performance, which is the film's most old-fashioned element, and its best.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

This maximalist approach can tax the nerves, though it has the benefit of keeping you on alert. It’s also pretty enjoyable. Mr. Fuqua, who happens to be surprisingly good with actors, does have a knack for chaos.

Washington Post Scott Eyman

It's a story that can be transplanted from genre to genre, because we never grow tired of it, which is to say that it fits snugly into the paranoid drift of American movies, and the value we place on one honest man with a gun.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The timing couldn't be better for a thriller that focuses on assassination, international war scandals and U.S. agencies of enormous influence and wildly varying competence.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

A stylish but essentially businesslike smash-and-crasher.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Stephen Cole

Like most modern action films, Shooter is too explicit, more interested in mayhem than motive.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

It does move along at a nice clip, and delivers exactly what belligerent action fans on both sides of the political aisle want -- a wholly admirable figure blowing up a lot of bad s---.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Suspended over a deep gully of disbelief, where logic takes more bullets than the bad guys, Shooter still makes the grade as hard-ass action escapism.

New York Post Kyle Smith

The paranoia is as thick and luscious as that Reddi-wip, and it's served from both left and right.

Variety Todd McCarthy

An immediately involving yarn of an ace Marine sharpshooter set up to take the fall for an attempted presidential assassination, picture saddles itself with stereotypical villains, hokey contrivances and too-expedient crisis solutions.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

The picture might be entertaining if it didn't take itself so seriously.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

The film has about five endings, each sillier than the next. Before it's over, the business end of that sniper rifle looks kind of inviting.

Slate Dana Stevens

Though much of the action in Shooter is beautifully photographed, the movie's force is as a blunt instrument of metaphor. Shooter is a video-game-fantasy version of the 2006 midterm elections, a howl of rage at the hypocrisy of the Bush presidency and the Iraq war.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

This is the first big-studio action picture with some of the disgusted, bloody nihilism of the post-Vietnam era.

The New Yorker David Denby

A virtual textbook of action clichés.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

An intermittently preposterous, drawn-out but sometimes entertaining story about an unstoppable ex-Marine.

San Francisco Chronicle Peter Hartlaub

Starts out OK, but then almost seems to be intentionally going for humor.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

If this were a more serious film, its cynicism about the U.S. government would put it in a league with "The Manchurian Candidate." But it is simply an Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick with bantamweight Wahlberg doing the heavy lifting for the preoccupied Governator.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

The story is often ridiculous, but director Antoine Fuqua provides plenty of fun distractions.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Despite gripping chase sequences and a few awe-inspiring fiery explosions, gaping holes in the convoluted plot make Shooter heavier on style than substance.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

A screwy assassination thriller for these murky times, it takes half its pages from Soldier of Fortune and the other half from links provided by conspiracytheories-zapoppin.org.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

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.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Fuqua keeps the action moving efficiently, but he doesn't know when to stop piling it on, and eventually, Wahlberg's army of one becomes more a comic-book vigilante than a righteously disgruntled patriot.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The result is lots of gunplay and explosions governed by little logic.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Sylvester Stallone is filming a new episode of his "Rambo" action series, but Mark Wahlberg has beaten him to the punch with Shooter, a preposterous gut buster that follows the formula so closely it would probably lose a plagiarism suit.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

Less subversive and infinitely less intelligent than 1999’s Wahlberg-starrer "Three Kings," this movie does blow lots of s--- up real good and punish contemptible public figures otherwise left unaccountable for massacring African villagers.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.5 (out of 10) based on 72 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Tony H gave it an8:
Ok, maybe I let my guard down a little toomuch when I go to see an action movie, but this one really seemed to have a story and kept to it. Sure, it was a little predictable, but to sit back and watch how the story unfolded was really enjoyable.

R. Lopez gave it a9:
Great! The Shooter is completely engrossing and totally fun from beginning to end. Mark Whalberg stars as Bob Lee Swayger, a retired Marine sniper who after lossing his best friend and spotter dissapears from site, to live out his days alone in succlusion. ten years later he is appraoched by Colonel Issac Johnson who asks him to use his knowledge to stop an assasination attempt on the president. And that's where the stroy explodes into a take no prisioners thriller that will have your pulse racing. and your adrenaline pumping hard all the way to end. I very highly reccomend this movie.

William T gave it a7:
While the plot may seem a little holed to those who have not read the novel by Stephen Hunter, Shooter is a considerable thriller with some nice action sequences and decent acting from the whole cast and you'll never find yourself bored.

Basil E. gave it a9:
Very good movie, good plot good action, good acting!!

Tom M. gave it an8:
Thought the actuall presidental assasintation story could of been longer but i liked the movie... had alot of cool camera angles and some badass explosions.

Jess R. gave it a10:
an amazing movie

[Anonymous] gave it a9:
Fun movie to watch, the action sequences are sweet, and the story while not entirely awesome did it's job well. It has it's cliches but they fit in well enough in the whole story.

Shooter Paramount Pictures

Shooter
Paramount Pictures