Shooter (2016)

Shooter's full of sharp cat-and-mouse intrigue and whiplash double crosses as Swagger's tapped by his former commanding officer (Omar Epps) to stop a sniper from assassinating POTUS. [22/29 Jul 2016, p.98]

Shooter doesn’t take off until the second episode. Part of the pilot is sleep-inducing, especially when Swagger’s trying to figure out how a sniper would take out his target. But once Swagger begins “hunting” those who have wronged him, it becomes an enjoyable rollercoaster ride.

Watching Shooter as a series is like falling back into a well-known and familiar story, just one with lots of guns. It’s downright comfortable. And that’s odd.

In general, the further Shooter strays from Phillippe’s character, the weaker the show becomes.

The problem with building an action drama around a sniper is that the work by its nature requires people to be several yards away from each other. A climactic gunfight in the season finale goes as far as to show the math--the mental calculations the shooters have to do to make their shot--to juice up the action. It doesn’t work. Shooter excels in one area--grotesque head shots.

Although the pilot sets up a potentially provocative scenario in which a law-abiding gun owner becomes an object of government suspicion, Shooter ultimately feels diluted and toothless.

Shooter isn't badly done. Some of the dialogue is cheesy ("Your country needs you"), and characters feel like cardboard cutouts. But Phillippe is sympathetic enough, and there is real tension throughout, with an exciting (if not exactly shocking) twist at the end of the premiere. The problem is that Shooter doesn't feel like the right show for our times, which are already tense enough.

The air leaks out as the season approaches its conclusion, with the final few hours consisting mostly of repetitive showdowns and reversals.