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This movie has it all.
In a very special Marky Mark episode, Joe and Greg discuss how Wahlberg starts the movie with short hair, but then has a ponytail, and then short hair again… So to answer your question: Yes, there’s a LOT to unpack here. Joe dares to ask if we should take Marky Mark seriously, and Greg just kind of Gregs a lot.
See if you can follow any coherent plot (if you find one please let us know.) Play along with our drinking games and listen for new tropes. This movie has it all.
Joe’s Back of the Box
When former navy seal sniper Bob Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg) is set up as the patsy in an assassination plot he must use all of his skills to survive and clear his name. What he uncovers is a conspiracy that leads deep into the halls of power. Racing to stay one step ahead can he shoot his way out or will he become another unwitting nameless victim? Driven by electric action scenes and a powerful climax, Shooter doesn’t just break the mold, dare we say it, Shooter shoots the mold from a thousand yards away…
The REAL Back of the Box
The first half of this movie is near perfect if not perfunctory in how it gets there. The best retired sniper ever is pulled back into his old life. Then he is set up and on the run. Great, I’m in. You had me at Mark Wahlberg being the best sniper in the world. From there we embark on a conspiracy theory/how the world really works soap box/what can one man do?/to why are we in the snow?/how did he get a meeting with the Secretary of Defense? And while it is certifiably bonkers and makes no sense, I absolutely loved every second. In fact the crazier it gets the more I love it.
Note: This transcript has been auto-generated, so… You know… It’s not our fault.
Greg: Joe in the movie. We watched this week’s shooter. It stars an X pop star, Mark Wahlberg. Do you remember the first time you ever saw Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch?
Joe: I do, I remember the MTV video of Good Vibrations.
Greg:
Joe: And I knew he was the brother. Donnie Wahlberg from Nkotb or New Kids on the block. But he was like hardcore and he was our rapper. And I remember not quite being sure if it was a joke, like, are we supposed to be laughing at this or not? Was it real? And he was like the Calvin Klein model, right?
Greg: Was he doing bench presses in the rain in that video?
Joe: I think he was. I don’t remember. That could have been walk on the Wild Side. Yeah, too, I don’t remember.
Greg: I don’t think you can question if somebody’s serious, if they’re doing bench presses in the rain. No. Yeah. And even if they weren’t doing it in the rain, it felt to me. My memory of it is they were doing in the rain, which to me says I took him seriously. Yeah.
Joe: That’s I wasn’t prepared for him to become a movie star. And now, like, I’m huge movie. I’m trying. Remember the first movie I saw him in? What was the one with? Reese Witherspoon is based in Seattle. He’s kind of a stalker. That may be it. I think it’s actually a pretty decent movie. There’s also, I think, Three Kings.
Joe: Isn’t he in.
Greg: That? Yeah, that might have been the first time I ever saw him.
Joe: Which is a pretty good movie. But then you read about David O. Russell being just like, the worst director ever in the world and how he treats people, and you’re like, yeah, is it worth it? So those are probably the first two that I can remember seeing him in post. But yeah, Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. It’s pretty hard for me to take him seriously.
Joe: In my head, he’s still Marky Mark. Yeah, any time I see him. And now, I mean, we’ll get into it because this movie is it’s everything you love about Mark Wahlberg and so much more.
Greg: Absolutely. I will just say that your initial impression of his music is probably the brand he is still operating on as an actor.
Joe: Yeah. Is this a joke or not? Is he in on the joke or not? It’s kind of better if he isn’t. But also is the. Is he? It’s. It’s so good.
Greg: Let’s find out and get to the show.
Joe: Let’s do it.
Clip: Bubbly swagger. You’re a hard man to find. I’m not hard enough. There’s going to be an attempt on the life of the president. The shot will be taken when? Beyond a mile by the six men in the world. Like a shot. Like this. We need you to stop this and that. Of all the men who live on the planet, one of the few people who knows what to look for.
Greg: This guy knows what he’s doing. You got to take him to the set up. Take him, take him now. That would be assassin Sergeant Bob Lee swagger. I didn’t do whatever they said.
Clip: I did. I’m in some better. I need some help. Swagger is still alive. That’s the hassle with democracy. There’s always a confused soul that thinks one man can make a difference. You have to kill him to convince him otherwise. I got a plan. I think I’m ready to go.
Greg: Why? Gandhi.
Clip: I’m going to find an abandoned playhouse. That I have something you want. Where are we meeting? Somewhere I can see you coming from a long way off.
Greg: The year is 2007. Antoine Fuqua, director of Training Day, teams up with Marky Mark, Mark Wahlberg to make a movie called shooter. We are also talking about in this classic classic film. Please wait as I pull up the IMDb page because I have completely forgotten. This is Michael Pena. Oh, Michael Pena. Come on. Who else is in this?
Joe: Danny Glover is in this, as well as one of the Morris sisters, and I can’t remember.
Greg: Kate. Mara.
Joe: Kate. Mara.
Greg: Tate Donovan shows up in this movie. Elias Cotes is in this film. He’s kind of a that guy.
Joe: Yeah, he’s a that guy.
Greg: Yeah. Ned Beatty is in this movie. Joe Skye Tucker I am so excited about this episode. I have been so excited about recording this for like eight days now. What makes shooter a great bad movie?
Joe: Oh my God, so many things. I’m just going to be a total fanboy about how much I love this movie, and really for no good reason. When you start digesting all of the insanity of it. Yeah, this movie is awesome. I enjoy every second of it. It’s so ridiculous. Okay, so I have to stop for a second and say you could not accept Sylvester Stallone as a Gabe, right?
Joe: I can never accept Marky Mark as a Bob.
Greg: No.
Joe: His name is Bob swagger.
Greg: And there’s no. His name is Bob Lee.
Joe: Yeah. Swagger. Bob Lee swagger. He is not a bomb. Not a nobody calls him Bob.
Greg: No, he’s Bob Lee.
Joe: Yeah, Bob Lee or swagger. Yeah. Or they call him his rank from the military, but his name is ridiculous. There are so many ridiculous tropes in this movie that make it awesome to have an opening scene. So he is, the greatest sniper.
Greg: And he’s a marine.
Joe: Yeah. And he’s, like, sitting there with his person is helping him, like, scope out whatever the scene is.
Greg: Donnie.
Joe: Yeah. So I’ve added a new trope any time a side character shows or talks about their home. So he shows a picture of his wife. You’re like, oh, Donnie, you’re about to die. Die.
Greg: You’re talking about the opening scene where they’re.
Joe: Saying.
Greg: They’re up on a ledge and they’re looking over at a road. They’re just shoving exposition wherever they can fit it. Yeah, it seemed like an afterthought to me, but maybe it wasn’t, I don’t know.
Joe: Yeah. So they’re sitting there for you. Assume. Baz.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: He chooses the moment that the caravan of cars is driving towards them with helicopters and support.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: To talk about his wife back home. Right. And I was like.
Greg: Oh, here.
Joe: We go to that. It’s on.
Greg: Totally.
Joe: So right off the bat, you have a great action sequence. Actually, the first half of this movie is really a solid action movie, really sets it up. Well, you know, he leaves the military after that and is kind of pulled back out of retirement. Yeah. And then the last half of the movie just goes sideways in the most spectacular way.
Joe: And so many crazy things happen. So you have a crazy conspiracy, you have a movie that that I don’t feel like they knew how to end. There are three different moments that could have ended.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: And they just kind of kept tacking on. You have Mark Wahlberg being shot in it and then recovering miraculously. So he’s like ready to go. He got some sleep.
Greg: He went through the carwash, Joe went to the carwash.
Joe: Did a lot of work in there. So this movie is so ridiculous. That just kind of throws everything you can think of into it in the best kind of way, where they’re not really in on it. So they’re really taking it seriously. But it’s so bonkers. So I turn the question back to you guys, White Hart, why is this a great bad movie or a great movie?
Joe: Slash bad slash perfect movie in every way.
Greg: The first 40 minutes of this movie are potentially the best 40 minutes thrown together in any movie in film history. The first 40 minutes of this movie are the best movie I’ve ever seen in my life. Wow. Wow. That’s a.
Joe: Bold statement.
Greg: And then something happens.
Joe: Something magical happens.
Greg: It goes from a great movie to something else, which is a turn I always welcome in movies. Yeah, but like most of the movies we’ve talked about on this show, I was all in and really feeling it. And then it occurred to me the movie I was watching was not as good as I thought it was going to be.
Greg: But I love this movie. I’m super interested in the phenomenon of Marky Mark. I think it’s just amazing what he has been able to do for the last, I guess, 30 years now. Yeah. And he’s still, I don’t know, he’s still like 32 years old, probably in his movies. Antoine Fuqua is a really interesting filmmaker. I think he does a fantastic job in this movie.
Greg: Why is this movie great? It opens with this incredible shot in Africa. We pass over like a burning village and then we kind of go over an oil pipeline that’s prominently displayed. The colors are incredible in this movie. The DP on this thing was just unbelievable. It was doing what all the best movies do, and it was doing British Columbia for Ethiopia.
Greg: And that opening shot, they said, yeah, we couldn’t believe it. This spot in British Columbia totally looked like Ethiopia. It was like it.
Greg: Does it, I guess, yeah, but it kind of goes super wide. Helicopter shot all the way up a ridge to where he and Dany are sitting, and then they’re just kind of joking around and they’re shoving exposition in wherever they can. They’re talking about the 40 goats that they’re looking at through their viewfinder. They’re saying they’re not on anybody’s side, which honestly, I don’t entirely believe.
Greg: I think those those goats, at least 20 of those 40 girls were on somebody’s side. All of a sudden we’re talking about nursing school. And Sarah and I think she made the clothes that she’s wearing in the picture. It’s like, what? What are we talking about here, guys? Donny says, you sure this is a peacekeeping mission? Just like, just in case we weren’t asking questions.
Greg: Yeah. And then there’s this great fight. You know, where they’re like, they’re taking people out and people are using mortars or rocket launchers or something, and suddenly choppers are coming at them and shooting at them. Donnie passes away in that fight. I like that his name is Donnie. I don’t know if that’s what his name was in the book or this is based on a book, by the way.
Greg: Written by a guy who actually wrote film reviews for the Washington Post and would write books on the side. Interesting that this movie came from a book written by a movie critic. Yeah. Movie critic. The book must have been great. Yeah, the movie had something else in mind.
Joe: One of my favorite things happens, and this is a spoiler alert to a drinking game of great bad shots where.
Greg: Sure.
Joe: You have a helicopter with this massive machine gun that misses. Mark Wahlberg swaggers character but kills Donnie. Yeah, and they’re literally laying next to each other. Yeah. And then he shoots down the helicopter. I believe with a sniper rifle, obviously. And then, you know, gets away.
Greg: You do the same.
Joe: Yeah. As the greatest sniper ever.
Greg: Obviously I what they kind of abandoned him out there.
Joe: Which kind of flies in the face of every military person I’ve ever heard talk about, you know, buddies left behind. And they always come back, but they throw in some line about, well, we’re not supposed to be here anyway, right? So we got to go. And he knows it. He knew the stakes.
Greg: They were eight kilometers into a country they should not be in. Yeah. Have you ever done that? Eight kilometers into a country you shouldn’t be in.
Joe: It’s going up to Canada, I guess was more than eight kilometers into a country I should not have been in. That should have been our opening question. Do you.
Greg: Feel Canadian? Shame. Like you shouldn’t be in Canada? Maybe.
Joe: We should save this for another podcast opening question, but I have a memory of us and Canada.
Greg: Oh, totally. From a totally. Yeah, we should have said 30.
Joe: Years ago.
Greg: Have we ever been eight kilometers into a country we shouldn’t have been in? Yes, we have been. All right. That’s a little teaser for a future story.
Joe: Foreshadowing heavy in this episode.
Greg: They are just hilariously detailed with what they’re doing up there as they’re, like, sniping. Donnie says the wind is three quarter value pushed to left. And I was wondering, did you agree with that? Was it.
Joe: That much.
Greg: Left?
Joe: I felt like it was a little too far left.
Greg: Two feels a little strong for me. Yeah, yeah. Okay. One and a half.
Joe: Maybe one and a half. One for sure.
Greg: Yeah, yeah. You know, at 1 to 1 and a half, whatever it takes. Its a mr. mom reference. All right, so after Donnie dies, I’m kind of going through this a little bit chronologically because we cut to 36 months later and he’s grown out his hair, he now has a ponytail he’s living up in. Do we know where he is?
Greg: Is he in Colorado somewhere? Maybe.
Joe: British Columbia sounds about right for me.
Greg: They were definitely filming it in BC. Yeah, I guess we don’t really know where he actually was. But 36 months later, I know we just talked about how two years later is my favorite. Years later, I think 36 months later might be my favorite months later. Nice. I feel like it’s a really solid amount of months later for a movie.
Greg: To John. Yeah.
Joe: You have to do a little bit of math to figure out how many, how many years is that? So, you know, yeah, I like that. I was in on how much further into the future we jump with that? Sure. I don’t know if it’s my favorite. I have to I’d have to do some thinking about. Okay, my favorite months and years.
Greg: Listen, you don’t have to have the answers. I just it’s my job to have the questions right. That’s right.
Greg: Okay, so he’s in the cabin and my mind starts to race at this moment like, oh my gosh, what is this? This is Commando. Is this Rambo? Like, how many movies have we seen where the hero, after some sort of incident, is now living in the woods in a cabin peacefully? And like a chopper comes. All right.
Greg: In this movie a car comes filled with Danny DeVito. Nothing to do. Me? No. Danny Glover.
Joe: Even better if it was David the. It’s.
Greg: Why was it not. You need to be though. Yeah.
Joe: Can afford it.
Greg: Badly. Let’s just cut straight to who should be in the remake. So Danny Glover shows up and as he’s pulling up, they’re like selling the good guy immediately. He’s one. He’s the best out there. He’s one of the best there’s ever been. Best case scenario for me, it’s like, hold up, what are we doing?
Greg: So Danny Glover shows up. National treasure Danny Glover National.
Joe: Treasure should.
Greg: Be in every movie. I have so many questions about this scenario of somebody showing up on the mountain. What movies did it remind you of?
Joe: Definitely. Commando comes to mind. Yeah, it’s every like military out of retirement film for me. Yeah, yeah. He’s the best there ever was that they compress so much into that first 5 minutes or 10 minutes where he’s like the best that ever was. And we’ll get him and yep, yep all of that. And they sell the good guy.
Joe: So yeah I mean commandos are really good. Probably the best one that I can think of. But there are so many more. I feel like even fast six uses this.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: You know pull them out of retirement because they found Letty and they have to go save her. And so this is a meta trope if you will, on this kind of film. And to me it really works because they’re setting us up for something. Yeah. No you kind of if you’re following along you’re like, oh, all right. The conceit is that there’s credible evidence that there’s going to be an assassination attempt on the president, and they need the best sniper in the world to figure out where that could happen.
Joe: Yeah. And so it all kind of makes sense is why it is like the I feel like sometimes the beginning of this movie is playing to type for the twist that comes a little bit later when they. And he’s set up as the patsy in this movie.
Greg: Yeah. Spoilers. Jeez.
Joe: Yeah, sorry. Spoiler alert if you haven’t seen shooter and what are you doing with your life if you haven’t seen this movie? Quite frankly, nothing good. Yeah. So they’re setting it up and it feels like over the top in a way. But it works like like you said, the first 40 minutes of this film. Yeah, are perfect, but I wouldn’t change one thing about them.
Joe: Yeah. And we go to Crazytown and it’s somehow even better, but not quite. It doesn’t hold together as well.
Greg: Right? Danny Glover is saying that they have good intelligence from inside the government, that somebody is going to attempt the life of the president. So they need to go outside of the government to do the recon on it. And so they ask him to do and they kind of pull on the Patriot strings. You know, you you signed an oath.
Greg: You stood in front of a flag and said you believed in you would defend the Constitution. And our guy is just like, okay, I guess I have to do it if if you’re going to pull those strings, they show up to his house. And Elias Curtis, is that his name? He he’s trying to, like, talk to Mark Wahlberg’s dog, Mark Wahlberg starts something that he continues throughout the movie, which is, he says, a lot of exposition so fast, you have absolutely no idea what he’s just said, but he says it in a way that you get the meaning if even if you didn’t get the word.
Greg: So here’s the scene when he’s telling the guy not to say hi to his dog outside the cabin.
Clip: Don’t do that. Come to the portrait and vote. You’d have to shoot the dog. It’s a slow draw you got there. Sure you want to do that? Shoot a dog in this can in a man’s land. I bury you in the hell. And the sheriff, a month or two later, he understands the can of a weapon. Slowly. So the gunnery sergeant doesn’t have to bury you in the.
Clip: You.
Greg: Danny Glover is laughing in that scene, like so. He doesn’t barrier in the hell he’s entertained by him. So then they walk into the cabin and he gets invited into this adventure. We’re off to the races inside the cabin, not only did the dog get a beer out of the fridge like a Budweiser out of the fridge for Mark Wahlberg, like best friends, this dog’s name is Sam, but Mark Wahlberg has the 9/11 Commission book on his desk.
Joe: I missed that.
Greg: And he’s reading a website that I want to say Noam Chomsky used to contribute to. He’s a little bit like trying to get to the truth, but he’s also maybe a little bit conspiratorial as a person. Maybe. Right. It seems like that’s kind of what they’re alluding to. Anyways, he hops on a plane and he is going to check out DC, Philadelphia and.
Joe: One other spot, I don’t remember.
Greg: Yeah, Boston. Maybe.
Joe: Maybe. Also he’s cut his hair and.
Greg: Yeah, we lose.
Joe: The bad wig.
Greg: Was that a wig?
Joe: I mean, if it was Tom cruise, it would have been his real hair and he would have actually been a sniper in the military for 20 years. But I just think it was. Yeah, 100% a wig.
Greg: But. Well, if it was a wig, I think it was a mistake to have the character cut off the ponytail. I think this would have been a better movie had he had a ponytail the entire movie.
Joe: I 100% could not agree more.
Greg: He does call somebody to take care of his dog and he says feed the dog once a day. Read him some ballistics tables. If he looks lonely because he’s still just all about that shooting long range thousand to 2000ft away or yards or the yards, I.
Joe: Think it is yards. But they keep. Yeah, they change it. And I think there’s talk of like there’s only one person who could make this shot. Yep. And these conditions under these blah blah blah.
Greg: I know.
Joe: There’s so much of that in this movie. It’s so amazing to watch. It’s so fun.
Greg: Shooters that are so good on our planet that that it’s like a short list. It’s like there’s only like 3 or 4 people on the planet who could even do that. Are you one of like a group of 3 or 4 people who are so good at something on this planet that you guys all know each other?
Joe: I wish yeah, that sounds like a cool group to be a part of.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Joe: Maybe not.
Greg: I mean, how many people have your koozie game?
Joe: That’s true.
Greg: Yeah. You like your cans cold? Yeah. You’re not trying like.
Joe: My alcohol cold is what I’m saying.
Greg: So any you pronounce it koozie, which I think is. Yeah. Is that what everybody calls them, or is that just. Do you guys.
Joe: Feel like most people.
Greg: Do? Okay, I’m in the small group of people. We all know each other. We see each other at the meetings of people who don’t call it that.
Joe: Yeah, we have meetings about you all too. Oh don’t worry. Yeah. You’ll get yours.
Greg: No, still don’t get him. So this is a really convoluted I don’t think we should get through all the plot, but long story short, he does the recon, tells them where the shot is going to take place, and then the shot happens anyway. But they frame him and they shoot him. And now he’s on the run, having been shot.
Greg: And that’s the ballgame, right? That’s the movie.
Joe: Yeah, that’s the set up. And that’s what that takes us right to 40 minutes. Yeah.
Greg: Well, he meets Michael Pena.
Joe: Meets Michael Pena.
Greg: Like steals his gun and maybe like his car. Yeah, yeah.
Joe: And is on the run. But right up until that point, like you kind of feel it coming, but it’s clever and you’re like, oh okay. Now we’re on to the this next part of the movie and the and then we just take a left turn into like how much crazy plot stuff and action movie tropes can we throw into this stuff?
Joe: Like, he’s been shot twice.
Greg: Right?
Joe: So he goes.
Greg: To a car wash.
Joe: A car wash.
Greg: In a police car.
Joe: And it’s the world’s longest car wash because it allows him to do surgery on himself, leading me to add a new trope to our tropes of medical care from either themselves or, you know, in the vet’s office or the girlfriend or whoever it is. So we have both of those things.
Greg: A bag in the trunk is not out of question.
Joe: Yeah. So he does surgery on himself in a car wash. A car chase happens.
Greg: Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about there’s a car chase in this that is very similar to the striking distance car chase in some ways. There’s some hills that cars kind of jump over. Did we lose any hubcaps in this one?
Joe: I didn’t see any, but we didn’t have cars with hubcaps. So that’s that’s the only reason that’s the problem.
Greg: That’s the problem? Yeah. Well shot. Very well shot. Action scene. What did you think of it?
Joe: I liked it, I like the car chase, you know, because there’s. You can feel like. How is he going to get out of this? I always like moments where, you know, he’s going to get out of it, but you’re in the moment and it’s well directed. It’s a fun car chase. And, you know, I think it changes cars.
Joe: At one point, I don’t I may have that wrong, but I can’t remember. There’s might be another scene where there’s a car chase, but this movie is so trope filled that, yeah, I might be confusing it with other other movies that use that. Yeah, it’s a fun car chase. You feel like everyone is coming to get him on the radio.
Joe: You can hear they’re closing in, there’s helicopters and lots of other cars and police officers and Secret Service, whoever else is coming in the FBI. So it’s pretty fun of how he gets out of it. Yeah. And then, yeah, then he ends up in a car wash doing surgery on himself.
Greg: Right. And then he leaves that car wash in the most suspicious way anyone has ever left. He like, floors it out and like, almost hits a car. And then the cops are like, oh, there he is. There. Yeah. It’s so.
Joe: Nice. Not at all.
Greg: No, not at all. And then, he gets chased. There are six helicopters, I think, in the air looking for him.
Joe: It sounds about right. Yeah.
Greg: We still have two years or three years until Unstoppable by Tony Scott comes out. We didn’t even realize it. But a couple of years before, our shooter was like, you know, we’re going to do we’re going to put six of those things in the sky and see most of them in every shot. We should say if we could just kind of time out for just a second, we are dealing with our first action scene right now.
Greg: Well, it’s not our first action scene, but it’s the first prolonged one we need to get into the second unit director of this movie. We will get to Antoine Fuqua. We’ll get to other people who are in it. But you know what, man? There are people who make these movies that really resonate with me, and they’re called second unit directors.
Greg: And the people who are in charge of the stunts. And so this movie, second unit director was Jeff Haber Halberstam. We’ve been talking about how we often will watch a movie and enjoy it in ways that we don’t quite understand, and then we’ll realize the action director of many of the movies that we love worked on this random one, you know?
Greg: And so this guy, first of all, worked on the first Spider-Man movie with Sam Raimi. Then he worked on 61 episodes of alias that show alias with Jennifer Garner, which was, run by J.J. Abrams. He worked with Sam Mendez on Jarhead. You remember that movie Jarhead took place in Iraq? Yeah. And then this movie, and then he went on to do The Happening with, oh, I’m Night Shyamalan and yes.
Joe: Where the trees are out to get you. Absolutely.
Greg: Oh, wow. Spoilers for The Happening the Day the Earth Stood Still with Keanu, The Last Airbender with M night Shyamalan. Then he did a movie called This Means War directed by Mike G. Have you ever seen This Means War?
Joe: I don’t think I have, but I’ve almost watched it and that’s got some of our favorite actors in it.
Greg: Yeah, it’s Chris Pine, Reese Witherspoon, and Tom Hardy, and it’s kind of like a, triangle a love triangle. But like two of the people are spies and they’re like just doing crazy. It’s kind of like the good version of night and day. Okay. That Tom cruise movie where it’s like a comedy, but there’s also action. Anyways, I bring up This Means War because one of my favorite people out there, a friend of mine, Mike, one time we were just talking movies and I said, what’s your favorite movie of all time?
Greg: He didn’t even think about it just goes, this means war. Have you seen the movie? It’s the greatest movie in history. And I was like, oh my gosh, we just became best friends. Yeah. So anyways. And then he goes on to Iron Man three with Shane Black. Okay. He does After Earth with M Night Shyamalan. He does Ant-Man, Doctor Strange.
Greg: Apparently he directed the third act of Doctor Strange. Like, this guy’s the real deal. Yeah, he worked on the old guard. And then the another great bad movie he worked on The Mother with J.Lo. There’s a lot of his movies that we’re going to be getting to know this just a little bit of a precursor that we will be tracking with the films of Havasu.
Greg: And it’s going to be incredible. And I watched the director’s commentary of this movie because I have the Blu ray right here, of course. And, thank you, Joe, my friend Joe, for giving me this. And Anton Fuqua said there were a lot of times where we could have done like, basically CGI close calls was 2007. You just weren’t a movie in the arts unless you had like, crazy close calls all over the place, Antoine Fuqua said.
Greg: We chose not to do that and maybe kind of tie it a little bit more to the 70s, where car chases were just car chases and you didn’t have to have special effects to make them feel like something. So that’s my long rant about that car chase that ends with Marky Mark going in reverse into some water. Was it in D.C.?
Greg: No, it was Philadelphia.
Joe: Philadelphia? Yeah, in reverse, into water and ends, you know, swims to safety with two gunshot wounds. But he went to the car wash to patch himself up. Yeah, so that he’s at least semi I don’t know I don’t even know how to explain these things.
Greg: He like grabs on to a rope that’s coming off of a barge that’s being pulled by a tugboat. I would love to get to work that way. Honestly, it looked like a pretty good way to go. And then we meet very much like the crew from The Fugitive, Tommy Lee Jones. They basically try to invoke a fugitive where it’s like there’s this crew coming together and they’re going to be looking for him.
Greg: And they’re sort of funny. It’s it’s exactly out of The Fugitive, which was, you know, 14 years before this. So here’s what those guys sound like. I got a Crown Vic black government plates. That guy in the front seat I am I want the banks of this river line from 30 miles five minutes ago. That’s always going to be a good sign that they need something.
Greg: Five minutes ago.
Joe: Yeah, I know, I just gotta say, you know, you’re in for a good moment. When they needed it yesterday or five minutes ago or last week. So you know, they’re in good hands.
Greg: Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, there’s a couple things I need to talk to you about. Let’s start with the funny one. Kate Mara, 40 minutes into this movie, he goes to Kate Mara’s house. Kate Mara was married to Donnie, his partner, who was killed in the beginning. Let’s have the conversation that needed to be had about Kate Mara in the movie shooter.
Joe: It feels like she’s a far better actress than this role needs to be. Yep, they give her nothing to work with other than is there a comment about her talk like Donnie mentioned to you in letters or something like that. So they had never met before, right?
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: But there’s some sort of connection and calls 911. But then. Right kind of doesn’t follow through and kind of says it was a mistake.
Greg:
Joe: The fact that the wife of the partner who was killed wasn’t like under surveillance pretty quickly. It’s pretty glaring weakness for the, secret Service and this, you know, she should have been under House watch, but you know.
Greg: For sure.
Joe: That’s far too in the weeds for this.
Greg: Movie, right? Yeah.
Joe: I like her as an actress. I think she’s like a lot of great actresses in these kinds of movies, taking ridiculous lines and making them believable. So it’s perfect.
Greg:
Joe: Then she does some surgery on Mark Wahlberg. My favorite unbelievable moment is he’s in the background apparently doing whip Ed’s off of the whipped cream can.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: To knock himself out so that she can do perform the surgery.
Greg: Another moment of him mumbling and not saying something. You ready for this.
Greg: I want to hose with the suspense up.
Greg: For luck. Okay.
Greg: It’s just dealing with it. She’s like, what on earth?
Joe: For me, this this scene is so ridiculous.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Joe: And that’s what makes this kind of movie stunt work for me so. Well. But she just goes along with it, like there’s not a question. And then we have to have the conversation about Mark Wahlberg saying lines out of breath when there’s no reason that he should be out of breath like that.
Greg: I’m so glad you brought this up, because it is the elephant in the room. It’s something that I decided to call brave acting. Should we should we let people hear what breathe? Acting sounds like? Okay, Lily.
Greg: Reenacting. That’s him stealing a hose from a truck so that he can make an a makeshift IV. He then uses a lighter to sterilize a needle, but then puts the solution through a hose from a under the hood of a truck.
Greg: It’s so perfect. And the reason you don’t even register that is because like, this guy is breathing hard. This breathing is really convincing.
Joe: That’s something only he does. Really. Yeah.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Every single movie I’ve ever watched, it’s I think I first noticed it in planet of the.
Greg: Apes.
Joe: When he was in that am like 2000.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: And every scene he’s in, he’s out of breath and he was seem to be running a lot in that movie.
Greg:
Joe: But in this one, in all of his movies he seems to have moments where he is breathing like that and he hasn’t just been running. He’s just like walking.
Greg: Around here.
Joe: Breathing.
Greg: Hard. Yeah.
Joe: Either needs to go see a cardiologist or.
Greg: Yeah this is his brand. Yeah. Are we serious about the breathing. That’s it’s exactly what you thought when you first heard his music.
Joe: Yeah, exactly. It’s it’s a kidding. No. He in. Okay. All right.
Greg: Weird. Just amazing. Yeah. I think that Kate Mara is really good in this movie and just has so little to work with. I was very torn while I was watching it. Would this movie be better if she had more, or would this movie be better if she had less. And I think it would have been better honestly in either direction where it sits right now with also a couple of the other plot points, it’s just kind of like, I don’t think this is all quite working together.
Greg: After the 40 minute mark, it starts to really kind of waver in my mind in its quality. It just didn’t quite all come together maybe the way they wanted to. This did feel like the kind of script that was a book and then became a movie. And by the way, they did a lot of versions of this scripts starting in like 93.
Greg: I want to say like the story of William Goldman did a draft of this movie. There was a time when William Friedkin was going to wreck this movie, and he was going to make it with Tommy Lee Jones as Bob Lee swagger.
Joe: Okay, interesting. I could see it kind of taking on more of a, Manchurian Candidate feel from not the one with Denzel, but the one from the 50s with, Frank Sinatra. Yeah, Frank Sinatra, which is a really good movie, actually.
Greg: Oh, I’ve never seen that movie.
Joe: That’s really good. It’s got Angela Lansbury as the bad guy in that she is spectacular in it. That movie is really good. It’s a really good, like, shockingly tight movie.
Greg: We got to watch that movie.
Joe: Yeah, it’s a great movie. It’s not a we will definitely should not be on this podcast.
Greg: It’ll be an accidental episode of great, great movies. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. William Friedkin, who was going to direct this, who was known for The Exorcist and The French Connection to live and die in LA. He was going to direct it with Tommy Lee Jones. Tommy Lee Jones was going to play Bob Lee swagger as the opposite of his character in The Fugitive.
Greg: That was his plan, and for whatever reason, they couldn’t get the script quite right. I think it was still too convoluted, and so they ended up making a movie together called The Hunted with Benicio del Toro. And used all basically all their ideas that they had for a shooter in that movie. And then they decided that that movie had succeeded.
Greg: The sequel to that would be shooter. They would get the book and officially do it. So we’re saying the script was pretty convoluted. This was the most streamlined version of the script that had happened in like 15 years. And yet still it’s just kind of like, what are we doing here, guys?
Joe: Yeah, that’s remarkable, considering.
Greg: How.
Joe: Off the rails this movie.
Greg: Goes.
Joe: As we haven’t really talked about Nick Memphis or Michael Pena’s character. Yeah, yeah, I love Michael Pena. I’m a big fan of his. I think he does. He’s great in action and comedy, probably best known in comedy. He’s also been an Ant-Man and those sorts of things. Have you seen him in those? Yeah, also done some independent stuff.
Joe: His character is so shoehorned into this to me.
Greg: I’m like.
Joe: I am still not 100% clear on how they reconnect with him after he’s had his surgery. And then they meet in the coffee shop where Kate Mara comes in and does like a Julia Roberts from Pretty Woman impersonation.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: To give him some information, because Michael Pena doesn’t believe what he’s being told by his higher ups and he thinks that something’s going on. So you have this like, how are they connected?
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: And then all of a sudden they’re like, that’s a buddy comedy cop.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Movie where they’re now partners to like, solve it.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: And they’re going to raid houses where there are, you know, 50 bad guys and it’s just two of them, and they’re going to kill all of them and find out, you know. Right. What happened? I and I honestly don’t quite know how they connected all the dots there. And the his character is like the one inside the system that’s trying to ask these questions.
Joe: And then there are people in FBI, who are also you think are good. And then who are the bad guys? Yeah, we’re not sure, but there’s not enough exposition given to that part. So I’m still not 100% sure. Yeah, the good guys are and the bad guys in the government besides Danny Glover who’s amazing in this.
Greg: And he’s the best effect.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And he’s like a contractor. He’s like, Blackwater. Is that what that when there’s more contractors, right. That he can go do illegal things, right? Other countries, we should say that the house that they attacked there was the House of the Scientist and Mission Impossible two who came up with it was a chimera. Yeah, yeah.
Joe: So maybe it’s, shooter a mission impossible averse.
Greg: Now, clearly, this is a side mission. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That scene where Kate Mara is doing the Julia Roberts, she has, like, a southern accent, and she’s slipping him some information about Danny Glover’s character to try and draw him out. That’s kind of the whole thing.
Joe: I think. So.
Greg: Yeah. My note about that scene was, what is this movie? What are we doing here? Yeah, I think that’s probably a super entertaining movie. She would be incredible in it with Mark Wahlberg and Michael Pena. But that was not my understanding of what was happening here. Yeah.
Joe: Such begins the multiple scenes where you go wait what.
Greg: Movie am I watching here? Yeah, I think Antoine Fuqua had had a stripped down script from a larger, you know, tome. And so I bet she did a lot more stuff like that in the book. And, you know, it kind of worked at the scene. It was entertaining. So let’s do it. But man, I think some editing needed to happen there.
Joe: Yeah, I feel like what would have saved this movie for me to get to the convoluted ness. Yeah, would have been another three months later. Six months later.
Greg: Where hard disagree. You got to go 36.
Joe: All right, 36 months later okay. And then they reconnect with Michael Pena his character. And then try to unravel the conspiracy as he’s on the run or something like that.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: The time frame from when he shot to the end of this movie.
Greg: It’s like a.
Joe: Week.
Greg: Like.
Joe: So it’s just so much happens again somehow he and Michael Pena now come together and they’re partners in this. Yep. And they go to a hardware store.
Greg:
Joe: And then are able to make military grade like explosives from just what they found at the moment. So yeah.
Greg: Yeah I want to say there was napalm involved.
Joe: Yeah. Napalm and like.
Greg: Explosives.
Joe: On timers and yeah you know they have amazing amounts of guns and ammunition. Right. Just like randomly.
Greg: He’s taught Michael Pena how to be a long distance sniper. He teaches them slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.
Joe: Yep. And so that’s all it takes, apparently, to teach them and how to be a great sniper.
Greg: Absolutely.
Joe: Yeah. So you have, like, moments like this where you’re like, one. How do they get there? Nobody noticed them. They’re, you know, he’s like the most wanted man on the planet who just tried to assassinate the president, but accidentally, accidentally, and air, quote, killed the prime minister of South Africa, at an event. And so. But he’s able to walk into a Walmart and buy an insane amount of ammunition and guns and explosives.
Greg: Yeah, but he’s got the cowboy hat on. So, yeah, that’s how nobody recognized him.
Joe: Right? And then they make all of this in like an hour, and then they’re ready.
Joe: To attack a well fortified house.
Greg: With the only.
Joe: Other sniper in the world that could have made that shot. Who did make the shot?
Greg: The guy who invented Chimera. Yes, yes.
Joe: The scientist who invented a camera. Also the world’s second best sniper.
Greg: You said so many things have happened in this movie up until that point. One of those things was Mark Wahlberg got to walk in slow motion in front of a flag, came out of nowhere.
Joe: There are multiple moments where he gets to walk in slow motion. Yeah, in front of either an American flag or an explosion. It’s so glorious. Those are the moments where, you know, I get a little distracted by, oh, they’re in Walmart and they’re buying all this stuff, and then you have a moment like that and you’re like, oh, yeah, this is a movie for me.
Joe: That’s. This is my movie.
Greg: Absolutely.
Joe: And dear listener, if you’re confused about where we are in the movie, so are we.
Greg: Yep. Yeah. Totally. Run a metra is the person who she doesn’t have a name in the movie. I think she has a name in the credits, but she’s she has a much bigger role apparently, in the book. And Michael Pena is working with her. She says something. You’re asking questions that are above your pay grade, which is also just to tell that we’re watching a great bad movie.
Greg: Yeah, she’s also lit like she’s in an entirely different film. There’s some story that Antoine Fuqua is telling. He in the commentary, he talked a lot about how he was using light to tell the story as well. When somebody isn’t telling the truth, they’re in a shadow, and when they start telling the truth, they move towards the light.
Greg: That happens multiple times. That’s the blocking in a, in all kinds of scenes. He’s he’s pointing out who’s telling the truth and who isn’t, but he never mentions her, but she looks like she’s in a completely different film.
Joe: Like she had, like, okay, I need to be in soft lighting at all times. And she spent like two days on this film. It’s all in the office. Yep. For f FBI office somewhere.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Email adelphia. And that’s awesome.
Greg: I was really struck watching this movie. A lot of it was filmed in British Columbia, which is just north of us. And and we live in such a beautiful part of the world, you know, I mean, Washington is incredible, but British Columbia all the way up to Alaska or to the Yukon Territory, just incredible. Yeah. So I loved this movie for that reason as well as like ash, it is beautiful up there.
Greg: Need more movies like that. I might watch The Edge. Is that what that movie was called with the Bear with?
Joe: Yeah, I like Birdman, Anthony Hopkins.
Greg: Filmed up in Banff.
Joe: Yeah. And we’re rewatching right now the X-Files from the beginning. First 4 or 5 seasons are filmed in Vancouver. Yeah. And it’s like here we are in Virginia and it’s like, oh, that looks exactly like a rainy.
Greg: Northam.
Joe: Western forest.
Greg: Oh, it’s a thing. That’s where there’s a Tim Hortons there anyways. Yeah. Speaking of Vancouver for America, this movie became a TV show. With Freddie Prinze Jr and Omar Epps in the Danny Glover role, although I think he’s a good guy. I watched the pilot episode and it’s filmed in Vancouver for Seattle, and there has never been a more Vancouver.
Greg: It’s, it’s it just created a, a conundrum for me. When you live in Seattle and they’re showing you maps of Seattle, you’re like, oh my gosh, I was on that street yesterday. Yeah. And then it’s so clearly not America. It’s so clearly Vancouver. Yeah.
Joe: Everything’s in metric.
Greg: Such a bummer. It must be a bummer to like, live in New York and be like, well, how did you get from that part of town to that part of town? Yeah, in one sentence of dialog. Yeah. People in LA are just livid every time this happens. I’m sure, you know, when they make a TV show of a movie and it’s just you just accept that it’s really not as good.
Greg: And the line delivery is just TV ish. That’s how it was. Okay. I googled TV shows based on movies, and I think that same year there was a show called taken. I was like, maybe I should have watch that tonight. Yeah. Anyways, that’s Vancouver for America. That didn’t really upset me to spell it here. Yeah, it’s gonna get well done.
Greg: I don’t.
Joe: Know. Got to the Globes.
Greg: Absolutely. It’s sort of made sense. But then there was Freddie Prinze Jr and I just I stopped listening after that.
Joe: You know, we usually don’t go through blow by blow on a film. But this one deserves that because we have this scene where they have the action scene where it gets to the person who invented the camera, and also the second greatest sniper in the world.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: They have a good scene. I actually like that scene between them. That person kills himself. And then there’s, you know, more bloodshed.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Then we have Ned Beatty enter. If you don’t know Ned Beatty, he’s like a character actor, really, from the 80s and 90s. He’s that guy in a lot of stuff. Yeah, as a senator. And somehow we end up at the top of a mountain. I mean, I feel like I’m missing a few things that happen, but for the life of me, I can’t really figure out why other than maybe they just had the rights to shoot at the top of a snow covered peak.
Greg: Yep. Glacier.
Joe: There’s no reason that they need to meet there. And one of my favorite things that ever happens in these sorts of scenes happens where I think they’re going to, like, get everything out in the open and meet and whatever the bad guys are there and the good guys. And so Nick Memphis or Michael Pena is coming and they shoot him, but he’s got a bulletproof vest and actually like a big piece of metal.
Greg: Right.
Joe: And then Mark Wahlberg is there.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Hiding as a sniper and killing kind of the bad guys. Although there happened to be four bad guys that could have easily killed Michael Pena at any point after he has shot and drops his.
Greg: Arm.
Joe: But they missed that opportunity, and then they use it to like he finds the other snipers and kills them and then comes and you think, okay, this is the end of the movie. That’s what you’re thinking? Sure. In my head, yeah, the first time. This is the second or third time I watch this movie thinking.
Greg: Oh.
Joe: We’re at the climax of the movie. Yeah, they kill Elias Curtius is the bad kind of henchman.
Greg: Well, Kate Mara shoots him.
Joe: Kate Mara shoots him, although his arm is blown off by Mark Wahlberg shooting him variously.
Greg: Allusions to, what was that movie we saw back in the day with Bruce Willis?
Joe: The Jackal?
Greg: The Jackal?
Joe: Yeah, but Jack black loses an arm.
Greg: Yep. Yeah. There’s like a subplot where Elias Curtius, it’s alluded to. He has been abusive to Kate Mara when he goes to kidnap her. And so she shoots him. It’s just the most unneeded subplot. Yeah. They’re just trying to give good actors something to do in a movie, and it just does not add up to anything that makes them think this movie is better as a result.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: So you have this climax at the top of the mountain and speeches by the bad guys and the good guys.
Greg: I mean, we’re done. Credits roll.
Joe: Yeah, yeah. And you’re like, you’re thinking, yeah, we’re done. Oh, no, no, we have two more scenes at least. Yeah. Of this movie to go. So then he’s arrested by the FBI. And somehow because he requested that he gets a meeting with either the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of State or the head of the CIA.
Greg: And say.
Joe: How does a person who has been accused of.
Greg: Killing the Prime minister, right.
Joe: In South Africa, get a meeting? And not only that, at this meeting they bring.
Greg: This ranking.
Joe: Gun to the meeting.
Greg: Right? Yeah. And let a guy in with a bullet. Yeah, yeah.
Joe: To have another climactic scene where you think that’s going to end. Yeah. But it doesn’t.
Greg: No, but can I just point out why wasn’t this taking place in the Oval Office at some point, somebody should have called and said, wake up the president. Yeah. Why not just go straight to the president?
Joe: Exactly. Because it is, I feel like alluded to that the president is in on the conspiracy because they’re trying to kill the president, but the president isn’t killed. There’s the prime minister of South Africa is killed.
Greg: Right. And this is what we learn from the bad guy from Mission Impossible two or no, the scientists are. I don’t want to place blame on him. Yeah. 90 minutes into this movie, we get an exposition dump of what the whole movie has been about. Yeah. What did you think of this expert? I thought it was a pretty good scene.
Greg: But why am I just now finding all this out. It seemed to place a lot of weight on something that seemed very much worth talking about.
Joe: But perhaps earlier in the film.
Greg: Perhaps earlier in the film.
Joe: Yeah that’s an excellent question. So why it’s on our podcast is the only answer I.
Greg: Have for you. And God bless it. So what we find out is in the beginning of the movie, the camera goes over a burning village and a oil pipeline and then gets to a road where people are driving down the road and Marky Mark is shooting people on that road. And what we found out is American sponsored contractors in the name of getting oil to go through a certain part of Ethiopia basically wiped out a village and burned it to the ground.
Greg: So now that oil company can get the oil to go through there. And the reason they did that, they didn’t even ask the village if they could do this, they just did it. So the next village would know to just get out of the way. That’s the plot of this movie.
Joe: That’s the part of this movie.
Greg: Okay, okay.
Joe: That’s very 2007. We’re in the middle of two wars about oil in the Middle East.
Greg:
Joe: So I feel like that played heavily on it. There’s a lot of bad guy exposition about this isn’t about good bad guys and bad guys anymore. This is about haves and have nots and you know yeah I feel like there are 3 or 4 different speeches by different people about that theme. But yeah, it took us a long time to get there.
Joe: And then kind of in the light of today’s politics, yeah, it feels a little like that’s what this movie’s about. Like, you think that that that information getting out is going to make any difference about anything that anyone’s doing in this day and age with everything that’s going on in the world? Yeah. Like that coming out and to light would be back page news.
Joe: In the movie it’s like if this gets out heads will roll.
Greg: And that’s why the assassination at the beginning of the movie didn’t kill our president and killed the Prime minister of Ethiopia.
Joe: That I can’t remember. But some African nation, Prime minister.
Greg: Because they thought he was going to say something to out that this had happened.
Joe: Right.
Greg: I was pretty floored by Antoine Fuqua the way he finished his director’s commentary in the scene where they let Bob Lee swagger into that government, whoever that was. Director of something. Yeah, with his gun. They show that director pictures from the African Village saying this operation happened and this is all a big cover up of that. And so he starts looking at pictures and this is about a minute long, but this is Antoine Fuqua saying, this is why I made this movie.
Clip: This scene right here with the Africans. These are all real images of atrocities from Africa, which is heartbreaking because those images, which is really why I wanted to make the movie. I wish we could have dealt with that a little bit more. There is no time in this particular type of film, but it’s just horrific, really disheartening to look at the images of what really happens in those places, of those sort of horrific events that take place in these countries and particular Africa.
Clip: I mean, really look at what that means and look at several events that are happening in the world today. It’s quite enlightening to see how much people are suffering for oil and diamonds and things like that in Africa. Women, children. When you make a movie like this, you want to deal with that subject more. At least I do, because you can’t just touch on it and not really go deeper into it.
Clip: It makes it complicated to continue on. When you look at these images.
Greg: I think it’s noble. He openly admits. You just kind of can’t do that in a movie like this, but this is what made me want to do it. And so he’s kind of introducing you, sugarcoating an idea into culture. But and I feel like this is the big but yeah. What’s your response to that?
Joe: I think the word is spot on. It’s noble idea in concept. And then in practice it totally misses the mark of what they’re if that’s what the movie that he wants to make, I totally could have seen this.
Greg: Being.
Joe: That movie.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: And he set the whole movie in Africa. Maybe they don’t have a white protagonist.
Greg: Sure.
Joe: Fighting. You know, it’s like an anti-colonialist dick. The extraction culture of what we do to second and third world nations.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: I think that’s a great story to tell. I think that that is not even 1% of this movie.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Really an action movie with Mark Wahlberg. You know the societal point that he’s trying to make is lost because it’s just it’s put in too late and you’re, you know, you’ve kind of surrounded it by the tropes of an action movie and a mark Wahlberg movie. I don’t know, that’s how I feel. What do you think about it?
Greg: Yeah, I, I feel like if I was him, I would have done the exact same thing. I would have been like, this ended up being the most important thing in this movie for me personally, while I was making a big dumb movie. So I just thought was really fascinating. I think he perfected shooter type movies with The Equalizer trilogy and we will for sure get to those.
Greg: I mean, those are incredible. I think those movies definitely know what they are.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: More so than this one. And I think the movie he was trying to make, there’s just a lot of really good craft in it, but it doesn’t quite add up to, I think, what they were hoping it would.
Joe: Yeah, it doesn’t pick a lane. Right, right. And then you end up with these weird grandstanding commentaries on.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Kind of American colonial power.
Greg:
Joe: In the middle of a mark Wahlberg movie, I was.
Greg: Like.
Joe: And like, I’ll be the first to admit I’m not the biggest fan of Mark Wahlberg.
Greg: What, you buried the lead on this one.
Joe: Yeah I don’t think he is like a terrible actor in an action movie. I think he is not going to ruin a movie, but he has a particular kind of brand, which is, yeah, toxic Boston masculinity. Sometimes wink to the camera. Yeah, yeah. So to me, it’s at the wrong moment.
Greg: I got that they were trying to include it. Because there were a couple moments I was like oh yeah the Africa thing. And then the second time you see it, you realize the story he’s telling with that initial shot, you know, goes over the village, it shows the, the oil and then goes to the conflicts and the people involved in it.
Greg: And, you know, this whole movie ties back to that incident or whatever. So, I mean, all of that story was trying to be told. But men I mean, yeah, we were also being introduced to Sarah and how she made her own dress and. Yeah. Is this a peacekeeping mission? Yeah.
Joe: And also, is it a totally different movie? You know, you have Denzel Washington and the main character as the main assistant.
Greg: Right? Or Tommy Lee Jones. Yeah.
Joe: You know, and if you lean into the political conspiracy.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: You know, and, and not have it be an action movie and have, you know, action elements, you can change. But we’re, we’re jumping into how do you fix this movie which is our important question later on in the episode.
Greg: So yeah. Well and then at the end that they wrote and shot after it had tested, not as well as they wanted it to, they realized they needed a different ending. So that’s your kind of theory that it has a few different endings. It totally does. Like it didn’t test as well in the commentary, Fuqua said that women especially wanted justice to be done against the bad guys, and they wanted Mark Wahlberg to do it.
Greg: The original ending of the movie was Ned Beatty gets on a plane and as it’s taking off, it explodes.
Joe: I would have preferred that. Yeah, honestly.
Greg: There was like a conversation between Kate Mara, Michael Pena and Marky Mark as they’re walking away from the government building and that’s we kind of say bye to their characters as they’re like walking down the steps or whatever. And then it cuts to Ned Beatty getting on a plane, and that blows up. And that’s the end of the movie.
Joe: I actually think that’s a better I mean, it makes it a better movie because.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: For those who haven’t seen it, the last scene, as Mark Wahlberg goes in and you know, Ned Beatty and Danny Glover and henchmen are in a cabin somewhere.
Greg: Right.
Joe: Relishing the victory that they’ve had. And then he basically just comes in and kills everybody and blows up the cabin. And then.
Greg: Right.
Joe: It’s in the snow, of course, because I don’t I’m not quite sure why. And then.
Greg: He leaves.
Joe: And gets in the car with Kate Mara, and they drive away and credits roll based.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: So yeah, I like the other way better. But it’s again, that’s under the under the guise of a different movie completely, where you can take out the action pieces and bring in more of the political and social intrigue into the movie. So we’ve basically rewritten shooter into it really is in a lot of ways, The Manchurian Candidate.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: If you’re going down that road of the conspiracy or if you ever see Jacob’s Ladder, which is actually terrifying movie.
Greg: Yeah, that’s why I didn’t see it.
Joe: It’s really good.
Greg: Tim Robbins, Adrian.
Joe: Lynn I think so, yeah. You and I both don’t do horror. Well, it’s one of those movies that I saw and I was like, oh, this movie is great. And then I couldn’t sleep for a week, so.
Greg: Yeah, Ned Beatty, Danny Glover, a couple of the henchmen are in a cabin. The cabin has former presidents on the wall, and this movie was in 2007. And Ned Beatty says, I’m a United States senator, and Mark Wahlberg says something like. Exactly. And then he just shoots him in the head. I was just like, I really hate this ending.
Greg: I don’t like this at all. And apparently the script that they had written once they had rewritten that ending scene was Ned Beatty had like a long speech. So they were kind of blocking it and figuring out where the camera was going to be and whatnot. And Ned Beatty was doing his speech and Mark Wahlberg, as a joke, interrupt and just like pretend, shot him in the head.
Greg: And, and the crew laughed so hard at that, they were like, well, why don’t we just do it that way? And then they kind of came up with with the other thing. But, Fuqua says that this movie is coming out in 2007, and there is a lot of anger out there. And this ending scene kind of changes the meaning of the movie in a way that he was initially uncomfortable with.
Greg: But he also said, people are so angry in America that this is testing really well. And he just said, I think it’s best that emotion is captured and done on the screen versus in real life. So here’s like, I think this is the way for us to process this kind of emotion. So I’m okay with it.
Joe: It feels like a movie that in a lot of ways the way it came off couldn’t have been made at any other time.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: You know it’s the at first sure has a point of view. It’s very it’s patriotic and yeah I don’t know. It’s, it’s trying to say something about politics and I think there’s like all of the pieces that would make it a good movie and not on this podcast. Sure are kind of pushed to the background and then just kind of surface and, and odd ways of speeches about patriotism and, yeah, heroic shots in front of American flags and stuff like that.
Joe: That feels kind of again, it’s just the wrong movie. I feel like this is like one of those movies where Shane Black needed to come in and ghost, right?
Greg: Oh, totally.
Joe: And okay. And go, what are you doing? This is an action movie or what are you doing? This is a political thriller. Yeah. Pick a line that’s like, pick.
Greg: A lane is what this movie should have been called. Yeah. Seriously? Yeah, yeah. There’s like a random delta clearance subplot in the government. Stuff that just is just completely wasted.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Just extra noise to make it seem important. I don’t I don’t know, I don’t get it. Yeah. This thing goes all the way to the top, I think is what they were trying to say.
Joe: Yeah, it goes all the way to the top, but then we don’t actually get to the top right.
Greg: So yeah.
Joe: Does it go to the top few notes.
Greg: Does it go over the top.
Joe: Probably.
Greg: Where would Marky Mark stand in an arm wrestle with Sylvester Stallone?
Joe: I mean.
Greg: Would he meet him halfway across the sky?
Joe: Help! So I think this is a draw. This is like over the Top part two, where Sylvester Stallone comes in and I still like Coach Marky Mark and how to be an arm wrestler. And when his son back.
Greg: Marky Mark is his son, grown up from over the top.
Joe: I’m 100% in on this movie now.
Greg: All right, we just need to retcon that though. Every time he talks to his son, he says Bob Lee.
Greg: Okay, let me ask you a couple of questions before we get on to the other important things that we’re doing. Danny Glover only refers to Mark Wahlberg either as Gunny or Son. He calls him son so many times throughout this movie. How old do I have to be before I can refer to everybody as son?
Joe: I would say 6065 of the year.
Greg: Okay, okay.
Joe: And it doesn’t feel weird. It’s just like a right out of a little bit of a quirky thing, but also kind of endearing. So yeah.
Greg: I’m confused whether Mark Wahlberg was walking slowly or was actually in slow motion. I got confused a couple times in this movie. It was hard for me to tell which was going on.
Joe: It could have been both like, put your best Strat on. Yeah, take it slow and then we’ll even dislike slow. It doesn’t it? Maybe the frame rate isn’t slow mo, but it’s just like turned down just a notch, you know?
Greg: Yeah, just a little bit of clean up Michael paint. Yeah. It was incredible in this movie. And like you were saying, I’m not sure he entirely fit. I want a world where he does entirely fit in this movie. I thought they did a pretty good job of him just going full pain. Yeah. He’s just so funny and vulnerable and he just has that natural new guy energy, you know?
Greg: So I don’t even know if that’s who the character was entirely. I guess he was like three weeks into the job or whatever.
Joe: Oh, I missed that, too. In this.
Greg: But but he knows that sugar was popular during the Napoleonic War. And that one scene like, yeah.
Joe: They’re.
Greg: Throwing that in there. I don’t know why, but I love it. That’s right. That in there.
Joe: I forgot about that. That’s such a ridiculous moment.
Greg: Totally.
Joe: Why would you know that? Right. And it’s just for us to, like, tell the audience something.
Greg: And in 2000, I probably saw this, like, late 2007 on DVD. The moment, I mean, the actual moment when I realized this movie was made for me. And I want to say I was laughing so hard I might have fallen off the couch that I was sitting on is the scene when Marky Mark sneaks up upon the bad guys who have taken Michael Pena prisoner and like a boathouse, and he shoots all of them and they don’t know where the shots are coming from.
Greg: But if they were to look out like the garage door to the lake, they would notice a boat sitting out there that he is sitting in with his sniper rifle. He’s literally a sitting duck right there in the lake next to the house. Yet he somehow gets them. And they did not see it happening at all. And it was just like he was right there in the boat with the gun.
Greg: How did they not notice that? Probably the hardest. I laughed in 2007. I’ll just go ahead and say that it was one of the moments that brought the most joy for me in my life. They go to visit the guy who’s like the old guy in Tennessee who knows everything about snipers and guns and whatnot, how how you could match a ballistic to a gun or whatever.
Greg: That guy. His name is Levon Helm. He was the drummer in the band. What? What the hell is he doing on this? Mike? Bob Dylan’s band known as the band. Yeah, he was the drummer in it, and he had been in a documentary that Antoine Fuqua was part of, and he was just like, that guy was awesome. Let’s just get that guy.
Greg: He’s a drummer in a band called The Band. That’s awesome. Okay, Joe, there is one very important thing we need to talk about when it comes to shooter in 2007, before I move on to the other, other segments of the show. Okay, I’m totally dragging this out, but this is too important to miss. Okay, this movie came out in 2007, seven years before another movie.
Greg: In this movie, there is a guy who’s the best who’s ever been, and he’s now out of the game, very good with guns. And then they killed his dog. Is this movie the prequel to John Wick? Maybe not a prequel, just John Wick is shooter but better. Yeah.
Joe: Is shooter in the John Wick a verse is basically the question. Okay I did think about that. They don’t show it. It’s not as graphic as in John Wick. That’s actually hard for me to watch in John Wick. Like right. As it should be for anyone who’s not a sociopath.
Greg: Sure in this movie we just find out they killed this dog.
Joe: Yeah. But maybe I feel like if it was a little bit more straightforward. I think what John Wick does so well is there’s no political intrigue or, like, it’s just no pure. They killed his dog and he’s going to kill everybody responsible. And you’re like, I’m in, I’m in, I get it.
Greg: If you have to invent something called gun fu to make it happen, so be it.
Joe: So be it. Yeah. All right. Invent a way. So I can. Maybe. Maybe we can. Grandfather shooter in as, Yeah. Somehow connected, but. Or maybe, shooter walk so John Wick can run or something like that.
Greg: Shooter might have invented it, but John Wick perfected it.
Joe: Yeah, exactly.
Greg: Okay.
Clip: I don’t think you understand. These boys killed my dog.
Greg: Anyways. Anything else you want to mention about this movie? Before we get to some facts and figures about it?
Joe: I feel like we need to. Now that we’ve talked about the entire plot of this movie in probably excruciating detail for most people. We should do the back of the box.
Greg: Oh my gosh. Okay. In case anyone isn’t clear about what this movie’s about, Joe, if someone was walking down the aisles of Blockbuster Video trying to figure out what movie to rent tonight, they see shooter. Well that’s interesting. Mark Wahlberg, he’s got a gun on the front. What would it say on the back of the box to entice them to rent the movie?
Joe: It’s the back of the box when former sniper Bob swagger, Mark Wahlberg is set up as the patsy in an assassination plot, he must use all of his skills to survive and clear his name. What he uncovers is a conspiracy that leads into the deep halls of power racing to stay one step ahead. Can he shoot his way out, or will he become another unwitting, nameless victim?
Joe: Driven by electric action scenes and a powerful climax? Shooter doesn’t just break the mold. Dare we say it? Shooter shoots the mold from a thousand yards away.
Greg: And then the bad guys grab the bullet fragments right from the can of soup. Matt.
Joe: Metal. I mean, we didn’t even talk about that part of it, but there’s a ridiculous piece about matching the metal from metal to electricity.
Greg: Yeah, I don’t like the.
Joe: Oh, my God, it’s so ridiculous.
Greg: All right, well, I am not sure if I am ready to rent this movie based on that, so I need to hear your real back in the box. Let’s get honest here for a second. All right. What is your real back of the box?
Joe: All right. The first half of this movie is near-perfect, if not perfunctory. And how it gets there. The best retired sniper ever is pulled back into his old life. Then he is set up and on the run. Great. I’m in. You had me and Mark Wahlberg being the best sniper in the world. From there, we embark on a conspiracy theory how the world really works.
Joe: Soapbox what one man can.
Greg: Do to.
Joe: Why are we in the snow? How did we get a meeting with the Secretary of Defense? And while that is certifiably bonkers and makes no sense, I absolutely loved every second. In fact, the crazier it gets, the more I love it.
Greg: Thank you, shooter for going there. Yeah, we didn’t know you had it in you. This movie came out late March 2007. Its budget was $61 million, and it only made 47 million in America, but it made another 48, almost 49 internationally. So it had a $95.6 million haul in theaters. This movie came out in 2007, so DVD sales were still very much a thing.
Greg: This movie made $59 million in DVD sales.
Joe: I would do a spit take if it wasn’t going to make a mess on my computer. Everywhere.
Greg: Movies back then used to have a real afterlife thanks to DVDs. Let’s talk a little bit about what some of the critics said about this movie. Wendy, I’d from the times and you said ultimately it’s just a vigilante picture with ideas above its station, which I think is probably UCF or above its pay grade.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Ben Walters from time Out said the film’s weird, thin politics become harder to swallow as it lurches from setup to setup. Agreed.
Joe: Yeah, both of them are right. But also, I didn’t love this movie, so.
Greg: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Richard Roeper, who you have to think is friends when he was growing up, called him Dicky Ropes. Around the neighborhood. He said it’s one of those conspiracy thrillers that keeps on asking you to take a leap of faith until you get tired of sleeping, and you just start laughing in all the wrong places.
Joe: That sounds like a great bad movie.
Greg: Yeah, but in a good way. Yeah. Joe, I want to finish with Maura McDonald from the Seattle Times, who says a confident, if uninspired action thriller and we read her reviews in the past, kind of shots fired, typically, so to speak, from the Seattle Times and Mara McDonald. But I went back to read a bunch of her reviews of movies, and I am so on board with her writing and her reviews.
Greg: She’s really incredible. Check out this paragraph from her review of this movie. Wahlberg, a recent Academy Award nominee for The Departed, never makes this character distinctive, but rather relies on his usual flinty toughness. The role of action hero suits him with his bland good looks and impressive biceps, but there isn’t a real performance here. Perhaps that’s just as well it’d be lost among the gunfire anyway.
Joe: I agree 100% with that.
Greg: That’s an unbelievable paragraph about this movie. It took us an hour and 15 minutes to say that paragraph. Yeah. Okay, Joe, let’s get to the tomato writing real quick.
Joe: Okay? It feels like a 70 to me.
Greg: It does. Okay.
Joe: That’s I mean, audience score feels just like dead on 70. Yeah, I feel like critics score is going to be somewhere around 72. But probably honestly, it’s probably like our best movies, our critic score like 40, audience score 70 or better. So that’s my guess.
Greg: This movie has a 48% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Joe: So far, so good.
Greg: Audience score is 80%. Yeah.
Joe: See our movie.
Greg: And that’s not flimsy. That’s from over 250,000 user ratings. Okay. Can I tell you one last thing. And it’s my very favorite piece of trivia and IMDb trivia about this movie. It is. Mark Wahlberg is a former member of the Funky Bunch organization.
Greg: He has real FBO vibes I suppose is what they’re trying to say. Yeah.
Joe: I didn’t realize it was an organization, but that’s, you know.
Greg: So organized you have no idea. Joe, should we finally get to drinking games and our episode? I should sure. Okay, let’s do it.
Joe: All right. We’ll start with our start drinking games. So silent or low flying helicopter? So many in this movie.
Greg: So many.
Joe: You know, at least six. And one scene opens with one. I feel like at the mountain scene, there are two helicopters.
Greg: Yeah. So does the opening shot of a helicopter in this movie make it fly under a bridge? Does that happen, or am I confusing it with some other great bad movie, which is only.
Joe: I don’t remember. Okay, it feels like something Tony Scott would have done any and every movie ever made.
Greg: Yeah, totally.
Joe: Do we have a push in and enhance? Oh yes we do.
Greg: Absolutely. Yeah.
Joe: We do not have one. Two people share a slow motion look in the middle of chaos, nor do we have an explosion with silent suffering and ringing in the ears. Missed opportunity in my mind, actually.
Greg: Do we have a can you push in and enhance moment of this movie, or is it just we have a lot of like surveillance camera footage of him.
Joe: I have the surveillance camera footage of him. So it can take a half a drink on that one. Half a that.
Greg: Okay, okay.
Joe: I did count that because they’re looking at screens and they’re in like a, a room where they would have a push in, in hand, but they don’t have that classic let’s clean it up and run it through this. And then all of a sudden a grainy photograph is perfect.
Greg: Yeah. So yeah. Okay. Okay.
Joe: Opening credits scene where the title locks in with the sound.
Greg: No, we have a.
Joe: Burning sound behind the title, I.
Greg: Noticed. Really? Yeah, yeah. So it does kind of invert the title. It’s not white on a dark background. It’s dark on the white smoke.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Okay. Okay.
Joe: Yeah, but they do bring up the noise. So like, whoever’s doing the sound editing really leans in there.
Greg: Take a drink.
Joe: Yeah. Take a drink. Does it flash back to dialog two minutes ago. Oh it does. There’s a couple in this. But yes, I drink. I also have the you know, kind of crazy CGI there a couple moments. It is pretty standard, but there are a couple moments where is very clear Mark Wahlberg standing in front of a green screen.
Greg: So okay okay.
Joe: And great bad shots. Every henchman in this movie is a great bad shot. Except for Mark Wahlberg who’s a great shot.
Greg: That’s a great bad shot is when someone somehow outruns a, like a machine gun.
Joe: Yes. Yeah. On a helicopter. That’s like. Yeah, five feet from them.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: On a cliff.
Greg: This movie is all great bad shots. Yes.
Joe: Missed opportunity with streets being in the inextricably wet. Yeah, dude, we do not having to give us the room nor Interpol which again. Capiche. So yeah. So our stock. But now, Greg Steinhart, I toss it to you. What is one of your first drinking games that you came up with watching this?
Greg: Any time you can see three or more helicopters on the screen, take a drink.
Joe: All right. I have every time they talk about the world we live in as a.
Greg: Speech.
Joe: I take a drink.
Greg: That’s solid. Any time someone says Delta clearance. No. What’s up?
Joe: I have any time you see a ghillie suit or someone who’s wearing one of those suits that snipers where they could drink.
Greg: Made for the character by a real sniper, by the way, like they they’re actual person. Okay. I have a new kind of game okay.
Joe: Oh I like it.
Greg: This is a drinking game. And again this doesn’t have to be alcohol. I do this at work on zoom calls with my coffee. When somebody says a certain word I’ll play drinking games with other people in the meeting. But if you are sitting next to someone watching this movie, any time we look through the scope of a gun in this movie, you go every other.
Greg: So you have to pay attention to whether it’s their turn to drink or your time to drink. It happens so much in this movie, it seems like a fun hang out with a friend. It’s your turn to take a drink or it’s fine.
Joe: Is that a trope that we need to just add? Because basically, the way that I’m looking at our tropes and I’m just like adding stuff as I see them throughout movies, but that is such a like shot through the scope of a gun. We see that so much and in the movies we watch. So think about it.
Greg: So our trope list is also called signs. You might be watching a great bad movie. I think if you’re seeing through the scope of a gun, there’s a very good chance you’re watching a great bad. Yeah, okay. I think it should be added to the list for sure.
Joe: All right. I’m adding it to the list as we speak.
Greg: Okay.
Joe: I have one. So this is a very specific scene. So we have the scene at the top of the mountain where there’s like the big. You think it’s going to be the climax of the movie.
Greg: On the glacier.
Joe: On the glacier. And then you have when Mark Wahlberg gets there, he makes the pilot get out of the helicopter and like, stand there and it’s the most awkward shot and he’s in the background.
Greg:
Joe: So every time they show the pilot in the background of that scene, you have to take a drink because he’s like there’s frozen standing there. Yeah. As they’re having this long scene. But I got so distracted by the pilot standing there.
Joe: And there’s like shot reaction shot reaction. And he’s in up in the reaction shot behind I think Danny Glover in that scene. But he’s not just standing there. Normally I felt like this is like, that actor’s big break. And he was like, I’m going to like, create a backstory and I’m going to stand in this weird way because of an injury from way back when.
Joe: And so I just got so I went down this rabbit hole on this, on this actor and it’s, oh, that’s my drinking game on that.
Greg: I love that. And it’s like driving you to drink. It’s,
Joe: Drove me to drink.
Greg: Yes.
Greg: I have anytime someone says the name Donnie. Oh, take a drink. Nice.
Joe: I have every time there’s a slow motion hero shot of Mark Wahlberg walking away from an explosion or American flag.
Greg: Take a drink. That’s a great one. I have any time. Sam. The dog eats a carrot out of his mouth. Oh, nice.
Joe: And every time he puts on sunglasses, which to me happened a lot. And like, Mark Wahlberg esque kind of way.
Greg: And I just have any time somebody is, like, chatting on some sort of old school internet chat room kind of scenario. Yeah, I.
Joe: Have a, like, old technology drinking game as well, but I won’t go into the details on that.
Greg: Okay.
Joe: I have every time he describes the math on a sniper shot.
Greg: I love it and I’m done. I’m out. Okay, well, I have.
Joe: A couple more. I have every time there is blatant product placement.
Greg: In this film, like, what’d you see?
Joe: So there’s getting the Budweiser out of the refrigerator.
Greg: Sure. Yeah.
Joe: The can he shoot is Dinty Moore.
Greg:
Joe: There are a couple other ones like when there’s on the snowy mountain top he’s wearing an under armor.
Greg:
Joe: Outfit. So like under armor is like right there. There’s a couple other ones but they lean hard. I think Wachovia is in it at different points though.
Greg: Okay.
Joe: Every time Mark Wahlberg has a ponytail you got to take a drink and absolutely.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: And then every time Mark Wahlberg speaks a line out of breath for no reason, for a reason that he’s not supposed to be out of breath or you got to take a drink.
Greg: Okay. That’s amazing.
Joe: All right. That’s. I’ll do our rapid fire tropes.
Greg: Absolutely. You might be watching a great bad movie if.
Joe: They kill all the henchmen, but the bad guy lives. I thought they were going to do that one. Although they does die at the end. But like, you have a couple of those. The false endings happen. So I kind of gave that one. You can throw the color filters in there if you wanted. I didn’t for this one.
Greg: When they’re in Africa. Yeah.
Joe: When they’re in Africa the best at something. So he’s the best sniper. He’s up revenge as the driver of the protagonist. He’s coming out of retirement. A friend or colleague, usually a person of color, dies. Early in the film, poor Donnie dies early in this film action movie trope of no women except for the love interest or the mother.
Joe: So you have Kate Mara, who’s totally underutilized in this. You don’t have a duffel bag full of guns, necessarily, but you have a duffel bag full of supplies when they go to Walmart and they make all of their stuff. So, sure, they buy guns. Yeah, we finally have a bulletproof vest check. You know, where they. So when Michael Payne, you get shot and like, they show that it was a piece of metal underneath.
Greg: Why would he do that. Yeah.
Joe: No reason other than to show us. And then I’ve added a few more tropes. So we have shots through the scope. As we just discussed as a trope. You might be watching a great bad movie if when they show the picture of the girl back home, you know that person has got to die, like, every single time. So I’ve added that as a trope.
Joe: And then medical care from a partner or love interest or a vet’s office, or they staple themself up. So many of our movies have this, and then I have the last new one is just the amazing recovery time when someone gets shot or beat up or whatever, and then the next thing, basically nothing has happened to them.
Greg: The healing power of whippets.
Joe: Yes, exactly. So those are the the rapid fire. You might be watching a great bad movie if you see these things.
Greg: I love it. Joe, can I ask you some important questions?
Joe: Absolutely.
Greg: Okay. Let’s get to some important questions. Did shooter hold up then in 2007.
Joe: I think barely.
Greg:
Greg: But better.
Joe: Than it does now.
Greg: Okay okay.
Joe: Foreshadowing on the on the next question.
Greg: The only answer I could put there was yeah. Yeah that’s it. Okay. So the follow up does it hold up now.
Joe: It’s rough. It’s a little rough in spots.
Greg: It is rough in spots. Yet it has had a total resurgence this year. Did you know that in streaming it was one of the most streamed movies on Netflix at the spring?
Joe: Interesting. It’s like a cult classic in some.
Greg: Ways, and it’s also one of the most streamed movies on Paramount Plus recently.
Joe: Wow. That’s wild.
Greg: Yeah, I mean, just classic great bad movies. Just striking the iron. While the 2007 iron is hot, how hard do they sell the good guy at this?
Joe: Oh my god, do they sell the good guy in this? You could not design a better way to sell the good guy than they do in this movie.
Greg: So I wonder how strong the correlation is between selling the good guy in a movie and having that good guy retreat to a cabin at some point early on in the film? Yeah.
Joe: Scott, I mean, I feel like John Wick takes it to another level. Yep. And how they do it? Yep. But this movie spot on. Yeah.
Greg: So perfect. It is perfect. Yeah. Okay. So how hard do they sell the bad guy? Not that.
Joe: Hard. Really?
Greg: Really. Yeah.
Joe: I for a little while, you don’t even really know who the bad guy is. And then.
Greg: Right.
Joe: As we talked about it just kind of spirals down a crazy.
Greg: Right.
Joe: Train basically. So who knows?
Greg: I still couldn’t exactly say who the ultimate bad guy of this movie is. It’s just like a big web of people. You really can’t put it out. It’s just everybody and a lot of people out there. Why is there romance in this movie?
Joe: Because they just need to shoehorn it in somehow.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: It’s not. A lot of.
Greg: Movies are stupid sometimes. Yeah, that’s my answer to that.
Joe: Yeah. There’s no reason that Kate Mara and Mark Wahlberg would ever get together in this movie, but they kind of make it happen. But not right. It’s not.
Greg: To. He’s been sending her flowers every year.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: On the date that Donnie passed away, I guess the card. Joe, are we bad people for loving this movie?
Joe: Probably. Yeah.
Greg: Yeah. This is.
Joe: That’s a hard one at at different moments.
Greg: So, yeah. Does it deserve a sequel?
Joe: I am shocked that there aren’t 3 or 4 sequels, so that’s gonna be, quite frankly.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Deserves a hard word for me. But yes, absolutely. There should be more sequels, and I would watch every single one of them.
Greg: There’s been a bit of chatter about this because of its resurgence on streaming. Marky Mark has said, I would love to work with Antoine Fuqua again and bring this character back.
Joe: All right.
Greg: And that show isn’t on TV anymore, so we’re good to go. All right, Joe, how can this movie be fixed? AKA who should be in the remake?
Joe: I have a list of actors that should be in the in it. And this is a sniper free for all movie. So I want Tom Berenger from sniper and the 700 other sniper sequels that are that. Yeah, I want Billy Zane from sniper, Bradley Cooper from American Sniper. I want Jude Law from enemy at the gates, Mary Pepper from Saving Private Ryan, Mark Wahlberg from this movie, Jake Gyllenhaal from, Jarhead Antonio Banderas and Sylvester Stallone from assassins, and Bruce Willis from The Jackal.
Greg: From The Jackal.
Joe: Yeah, I want all of them in the same movie, and it’s just Highlander style. There can only be one now.
Greg: Are they all trying to snipe each other? Sure. Or are they banding together to get the one evil sniper?
Joe: No. They got to be going against each other. It is totally, to me, Highlander style.
Greg: So? So it just takes place in like a mountain range. And they’re all just sitting there? Yeah, sniping.
Joe: Lots of shots through scopes.
Greg: So many cans of soup I practice to fun.
Joe: All right. How are you going to fix this movie?
Greg: Okay, I first of all, just kind of want to apologize that I think in our last episode or two, I’ve kind of phoned in my answers on this one. I’ve also not really answered how it could be fixed and then didn’t really have great ideas for the remake. So I try to bring a little bit more to this one.
Greg: This time. I would like to say that if you’re trying to fix this movie, we need to take a long, difficult look at Kate Mara’s part. It is really rough. It either needs to be more or less. I think either would work, but it is definitely the incorrect amount right now. Agreed. Agreed. So my first note is something has to be done about Kate Mara, and it’s totally not her fault that, you know, watching her in this movie where you can see that she’s really good, really reminded me of the James Bond movies with Pierce Brosnan, where I really lay the problems of those movies at the writing.
Greg: He was really doing everything he could, but the writing of those movies just sometimes gave him gold. But it didn’t add up to much. And he really kind of he chewed on everything. They they gave him but little Ralph. All right. The disturbing subplot with her and Elias Curtius is just ridiculous and has to go. So that’s out as well.
Greg: Yeah, they should have done more with the Africa subplot. A great more should have been done. We should have spent more time there in the beginning, setting it up and continued to talk about it throughout. We need to rewrite the ending, and actually in rewriting, I say we just go back to the original one where the senator’s plane explodes.
Greg: And maybe Marky Mark has now aligned himself with like, a secret department that fixes, America’s ugly underbelly. You know, there’s, like, basically some sort of MI6. Yeah, or some sort of IMF impossible mission for us. I feel like the way it ends right now was just super random. And he kills people and drives away. It doesn’t work for me.
Greg: And I do like the idea of Ned Beatty’s plane exploding, but it’s because like the good guys are winning not because just. Yeah good old is awful. So that’s how I would fix this movie. Something that really struck me as I was watching this and then looking at, Antoine Fuqua was IMDb pages. He’s worked with Ethan Hawke a lot of times, famously in Training Day.
Greg: But like I want to say like four more times, I think this movie should just straight up be remade with Ethan Hawke.
Joe: I mean.
Greg: How much better would it be with Ethan Hawke?
Joe: So much.
Greg: Better. It probably gets less of a budget, but I really think it would be rooted in something a lot better. This is a big poll. I don’t know if you’ll get this one. Do you know who Bruce McGill is? I know the name. Have you watched the movie The Insider? There’s this amazing scene in The Insider where he is, a lawyer in a courtroom, and he’s just got the southern accent, and he just says, oh, you mean get the bad guys?
Greg: You don’t get to instruct anything around here. This is not North Carolina, not South Carolina, nor Kentucky. This is the sovereign state of Mississippi’s proceeding. Wipe that smirk off your face.
Joe: He’s that guy. And so many movies you’ve seen.
Greg: So I think he is in the remake as the senator. I think that better not be with us anymore. So yeah, nothing that’s ever influenced who should be in the remake in this segment, I think Bruce McGill plays a senator from the South. I think we keep Kate Mara because I honestly think she’s amazing. But in the Danny Glover role, I think we should cast Danny Glover.
Greg: I’m not an animal like Danny Glover is coming back. If we get if there’s a chance we can work with Danny Glover, we obviously bring him back. Yeah. All right, Joe, next important question. What album is this?
Joe: So I feel like I phoned this one in. Okay. And I don’t really have a good reason other than I’m tying it in with a familial connection. This is new kids on the block hangin tough.
Greg: Okay.
Joe: This is Donnie Wahlberg and his boy band, 1988, setting the stage for Mark Wahlberg to be Marky Mark. I don’t have a good reason. I tried to look at, I’m not gonna lie, there’s no good reason. I looked at albums of 2007. I tried to think of albums that have a great first half and then go off the rails in the second half.
Joe: I couldn’t think of a better. Oh, I just came back to phoning it in with New Kids on the block. So, save me from myself. What did you come up with?
Greg: Okay. Marky Mark’s life had fallen apart. He went to a cabin, and then from that cabin was drawn out and started a new adventure that immediately made me think about Justin Vernon, who had a band that was kind of falling apart. I think it was in Raleigh, North Carolina. He decides to leave Raleigh or wherever he was, and he drives straight through the night to northwestern Wisconsin, to a remote cabin.
Greg: This is in November. It’s a cabin that his dad built, and it’s super remote. If he wants to eat there, he basically has to go hunt it like he’s fully pulling a Bob Lee swagger, and he stays there for 3 or 4 months over a winter. Like he went there in November, left in February. While he’s there, he’s struggling for things to do.
Greg: So he decides to start recording songs in the cabin, and he also discovers a box set of DVDs of Northern Exposure while he’s there. And so he goes all in on Northern Exposure and just like, really enjoys, like hanging out with the people in his solitude and in northern Exposure, there’s, I think, a fake celebration in the town where they all say, Bon, they’re to each other.
Greg: Justin Vernon emerges in February with 39 minutes. It’s his first album that he puts out under the name Bonnie. They’re taken from Northern Exposure, and it’s the album for Emma forever ago, and it’s incredible. Don’t you ever, by the way, means good winter. And that’s kind of, I think, how he alluded to his time there in the cabin.
Greg: He was like getting over all kinds of like liver trouble and whatever, and like he literally was like starting a new part of his life. He’s like 25. So there’s that first Bonnie record, which is just one of the classics of the last 20 years. It’s such a good album. And, I wish that there had been a DVD of shooter while I was there.
Greg: Would have enjoyed it.
Joe: Yeah, maybe the music wouldn’t have been as good, but that’s all right.
Greg: Totally, totally. All right, Joe, finally, at the end of our important questions, we need to rate this movie. Now we have a scale. It goes great bad movies, good bad movies. Okay. Bad movies, bad bad movies, or worst case scenario, awful bad movies. How do you rate shooter?
Joe: I would love to, like, give you a song and dance about how this is a good or okay, but this is a great bad movie.
Greg: Wow.
Joe: It has all of the what I love so much in a movie of them taking themselves really seriously, trying to do something above their station or their pay grade. A credit to the BBC. I have a soft spot for this movie because it.
Greg: Is.
Joe: So ridiculous, and I am one of those people that if you said you want to watch shooter, I’d be like any time of day. I already this time, yeah, I’m in, so I know that I shouldn’t rate it. So I just love this movie. What about you? Where’s your rating on.
Greg: It I love it, I feel like you’re reacting to your previous review of The Rundown, and I’m reacting to my previous reviews rundown, where I gave that movie a great bad movie. You gave it a good, bad movie, but we were right on the line. Yeah, I’m going to give this a good, bad movie. I think there’s enough in this movie that bugs me that I would maybe rather watch something else if someone has it on.
Greg: Obviously I’m going to sit down and enjoy it and I’ll enjoy every minute of it. But there’s just enough in here where I kind of feel like, what else do you have in your great bad movie collection that we could watch? All right. And as always, I think we should say, spoilers for shooter.
Joe: Yeah, spoilers for shooter. I mean.
Greg: Joe, I think it goes without saying that, we made it.
Joe: Yeah, we had the conversation that needed to be had about shooter. In fact, I would be shocked if anyone else need to actually ever talked about this movie again.
Greg: Absolutely. I just oh, oh my gosh, I just noticed the time. Listen, this has been great, but, I’m going to go do some weapons and pass out.
Joe: Oh, interesting. Nice, nice. Yeah. I’ve got to go to I’ve got to run over to the hardware store and make some, military grade weapons. No, don’t worry, it won’t take that long at just, like a couple of hours, so it’ll be fine.
Greg: Okay? Okay. That works for me. Can I go with you? Because while we’re doing it, I feel the need to shoehorn in some exposition about Sarah and what her dreams are before we continue doing whatever we’re doing here. Oh, it’s.
Joe: Funny you should mention Sarah. Anyway, you know, I’m a close friend here. You just showed me a picture of his wife named Sarah back home.
Greg:
Joe: It’s not like we haven’t been out here scoping this area for days and days and have been working together for years. Anyway, bad guys are coming. I sure hope he survives. And it wasn’t a bad omen about, of me. Of him showing me this picture.
Greg: Come on. I’m sure he’s fine, but listen, if you’re going to be doing that. Oh, I’m being told it’s time for our podcast to jump ahead 36 months. So I think I’m gonna do that.
Joe: Oh, weird. Weird. Anyway, Danny Glover is here. He wants me to check out some cities, hoping to stop someone. An assassination attempt that seems totally logical and above board to me. So I’m going to go.
Greg: Will you do me a favor and take a picture of the engine of his truck?
Joe: Yeah, absolutely.
Greg: Okay, great. I, I.
Greg: I’m really starting to question if this is really a peacekeeping mission. So I think I’m just going to head out.
Joe: Yeah, that’s that’s good. Anyway, I’m thinking of growing my hair out, so I can have a cool ponytail.
Greg: So I think you should. And, so yeah, I guess we won’t be recording for a while, which works for me because I feel like we are about eight kilometers into an episode. We should not be in.
Joe: Yeah, that’s probably true. Anyway, the barometric pressure is dropping, so I need to recalculate some things on my sniper shot. I’m about to take sir.
Greg: Secret weapon is, just two left. Nice guys. You left? Yeah.
Joe: You left.
Greg: That totally works for me. Because I don’t know if you’ve noticed. I’m looking at my window, and there are about 40 goats out there. And I am having a tough time figuring out whose side they’re on. So I’m going to go figure this out.
Joe: Yeah, that’s fine, that’s fine. I’ve got a meeting with the Secretary of Defense. Yeah. It was super easy to schedule. I just had to ask for it. And he said, fine.
Greg: Okay, so. Oh, so.
Joe: They’re going to have my highly specialized deadly sniper rifle there, even though I’ve been accused of killing the Prime minister of South Africa or some African nation that was totally, totally aboveboard.
Greg: I think you’re going to get a chance to do your pins bit. Yeah. Always kills. Okay, well, why are you doing that? My dog is here and looking a little lonely, so I’m going to read him some ballistics tables.
Joe: That’s fine, that’s fine. I also, need don’t have any anesthesia, so, I have this kind of whipped cream, so that’ll work.
Greg: That totally works. In fact. Hey, while you’re doing that, I should go. I’m. I think I need to get to a carwash, because I’m pretty sure this gunshot wound is not going to fix itself. Yeah.
Joe: That’s right. I’m going to the store to get some sugar to stop the bleeding. I read about it in some book on the diplomatic wards.
Greg: Sure. We all did. You kidding me? It’s on the news every night. Yeah. Okay. Well, that works for me, actually. Oh, my gosh, I need to head out the door. I’m about to miss my ride for work, which is a rope connected to a barge being pulled by a tugboat. Nice.
Joe: That sounds like a good commute.
Greg: Yeah. All right, well, that works for me. I’ll see you soon.
Joe: All right. See you soon.