Note: the author of this review watched The shooter on a digital screen From home. Before making the decision to see it – or any other film – at the cinema, consider the health risks involved. Here it is an interview on the subject with scientific experts.
Liam Neeson, the snarling Irish saint of ex-cops and deadbeat parents, is not an obvious choice for the role of a conservative and stubborn southwestern farmer. However, there he is as a Jim Hanson in Robert Lorenz’s The shooter, wearing a cowboy hat and carrying a sighting rifle as he told the Border Patrol about some “AIs” near his property. As we will see shortly, the land that Jim is defending will not be his for much longer. Standing in front of the ranch at dusk, with an American flag slung over his shoulder, he receives a foreclosure notice from some idiot at the bank. Coyotes and vultures, both literal and figurative, made their appearances. The symbolism of being Mr. Economic Anxiety is a heavy burden to bear.
A few days later, Jim sees a woman and her son sneaking over the border fence, chased by heavy men. The 2nd Amendment and the shine of steel appears. Neeson’s interpretation of an American accent rarely sounded less convincing: “Sorry, Pancho, these are my illegal ones.” The impasse becomes a shootout, the woman ends up dead and, after a long examination of conscience, Jim finds himself running away with the boy Miguel (Jacob Perez), partly due to the feeling of guilt for his role in the death of his mother and partly because there is a backpack full of money stolen from the cartel involved. At that point, things started to fall into place. The child, the scorn, the politics, the indifferent pace, the undefined heart, the complaints: this should be the property of Clint Eastwood.
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It is possible that The shooter was designed for the old Man Without a Name. Lorenz, who has already directed the 2012’s Curve problem, is the producer of Eastwood since Mystic River, was his assistant director before that and, in general, recorded more than a quarter of a century in the United States of Clint. Perhaps the material was very close to recent and future trips to Eastwood (The mule and what is being posted Cry Macho), or perhaps it simply required a younger, taller, narrower and older star. Lorenz is obviously not intimidated by the inevitable comparisons. He even gave Eastwood a kind of cameo through a music video. Hang ‘Em High that plays on a motel room TV. (It’s the scene with the eggs.)
This makes the critic’s job a little too easy. If someone were to diagnose a central problem with The shooter, is that it is not really a Clint Eastwood film; it lacks space to breathe, the initial indifference that always makes an attractive opposite to the Eastwoodian sense of purpose. Despite some concessions to the persona of Neeson’s canvas (Jim is a widower and a disillusioned local barista), the plot remains uninhabited. Jim is trying to hand Miguel over to the boy’s relatives in Chicago while being chased by a cartel killer (Juan Pablo Raba) and his own stepdaughter (Katheryn Winnick), who is an agent of the Border Patrol. Hearts are softened; bond between man and boy; the mile markers of a near-redemption arc are crossed with the help of a real script.
The result is something between homage and anonymity, dotted with some rigid and superficial fighting scenes. Resisting all of this, Neeson remains the image of an obstinate and visible commitment. Even he seems to know that he is the wrong man for the job, conveying his dusty archetype with the kind of obligation that The shooter otherwise, it cannot express. One can imagine the severe, self-flagellating, self-deprecating, post-Occupied– Neeson cycle waiting to explode so he can control his character’s drink, his regrets, his apparent loss of faith. But instead, he is behind the wheel of a pick-up truck with a dog beside him, mumbling about cell phones and the government.