There's something primal and efficient about the way Swagger operates (maybe Bourne star Matt Damon offered Wahlberg a few pointers on the set of The Departed). If Babel is to be believed, even a scrawny goatherd gets lucky now and then, hitting the broad side of a bus from nearly a mile away. Mixing brawn and brains, Wahlberg turns the intensity inward. Swagger's an instinct-driven killing machine. That's why, three years after the government left Swagger and his buddy for dead in a top-secret "peacekeeping" mission, Col. Isaac Johnson (Danny Glover) and his shady accomplices show up at his remote cabin asking him to help prevent a presidential assassination. The way they see it, Swagger is uniquely talented — to take the fall.

These days, most filmmakers find it tough to top what audiences get from the average episode of 24 or Prison Break, but Training Day director Antoine Fuqua knows how to deliver a lean, white-knuckle action scene. From the second the shifty-looking agents turn on Swagger, trying to frame him for the assassination attempt, to the wound-dressing scene that follows, in which he stabs a homemade IV into his arm, the movie races forward with rare intensity.

"I'm going to burn their playhouse down," he tells his buddy's young widow (Kate Mara), a beautiful, albeit distracting, love interest. Teaming with the one agent he can trust (Michael Peña), Swagger wastes no time blowing things up like the best Reagan-era action movies.

As if responding to complaints against mindless action movies, Shooter tries to dress up all its pyrotechnics with a scrambled political statement. Though audiences may find some satisfaction in Shooter's confused pro-violence, anti-government message, Swagger is anything but the "liberal Rambo" early reports make him out to be.

The character admits he doesn't much care for the current president, "or the one before him." Swagger's only loyalty is to his dog, and though screenwriter Jonathan Lemkin fills the script with "mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore" speeches, the line our "honorable" hero uses to justify his outrageous vigilante run is, literally, a no-brainer: "I don't think you understand, these are the boys that killed my dog."

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

[as featured in The Miami Herald]