**1/2 out of ****

Mark Whalberg being one of my new favorite actors, I was looking forward to this movie release for a while. And after having seen it, I must say that Whalberg makes an excellent action hero. ^_^ He should definitely make more action movies. Lots more.

Premise: Bobby Lee Swagger is a former Marine Corps sniper. Uber sniper. Like UBER UBER sniper. He happens to be the perfect person to frame for an assassination attempt. Assassination attempt on who? The president, of course! Naturally the double cross plan goes wrong, Swagger survives, and heads out to wreak vengeance. And clear his name, I guess. Whichever happens to come first. ^_^

This was actually a fairly decent movie. Whalberg, as I believe I mentioned before, is a fantastic action hero. Danny Glover, however, playing one of the main villains, was lackluster and disappointing.... somewhat wooden. And the movie ran very long. Very, very long in fact... when I was watching it towards the last forty five minutes/half hour I kept rolling my eyes... you know, in the "is this EVER going to end???" kind of way. Yes, you know what I'm talking about, you've done it too. ^_^

A lot more of this movie should have been cut and left on the editing room floor. There were too many sections that dragged on and dragged on, and just when you start to get a little too bored to retain interest in the film, they throw in some nifty action sequences. It's worse towards the end, but the very end makes up for it. ^_^

The writing was decent, nothing too special about the cinematography, and all in all the acting was decent, except for Danny Glover (I still can't figure out what happened there). Kata Mara was fine, though she pretty much has that deer in headlights look through most of the movie.

One final note: Whalberg's dog in the beginning of the film is AMAZING. You will understand when you see his nifty little trick. The nifty little trick called "get me a beer out of the refrigerator". Yep. You better believe that if I ever have a dog I'm training him to do that. ^_^