Film / Shooter

Agent Memphis: You could hire a good lawyer and I'll call the Bureau. They can work out some kind of deal. This is explainable. You can prove that you didn't shoot the Archbishop.

Swagger: I don't think you understand. These boys killed my dog.

Shooter is a 2007 film directed by Antoine Fuqua, based on the 1993 novel ''Point Of Impact'' by Stephen Hunter, although it does deviate from the source material in several parts.

Bob Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg) is a former Marine Scout Sniper who was disillusioned with the government after he was left behind enemy lines during a mission, only escaping on his own terms.

Yet because he is the best at what he does, he is recruited by the government to help track down a potential sniper, only to become the scapegoat as part of a Government Conspiracy. Swagger goes on the run but knows he has to fight back, with the help of allies like rookie FBI agent Nick Memphis (Michael Peña) and his deceased best friend's wife Sarah Fenn (Kate Mara). What they find reveals new details about the mission where Bob was trapped behind enemy lines.

Meanwhile, the widow of Bob's sniper partner is also dragged into the events, and Bob has to save her, though she is not a traditional Damsel in Distress, either.

Shooter enjoyed moderate box office success and mediocre critiques, with a 48% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In its genre, it is a conspiracy thriller and rides on the paranoia of the Bush years. It also owes a lot to The Bourne Series (including the general resemblance between Wahlberg and Matt Damon), although the sniper angle and being rated R works in separating itself from other Follow the Leader types.

Mark Wahlberg is also involved in the television adaptation of Shooter, which is being aired under USA Network.

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Shooter provides examples of:

#-G

• Adaptational Attractiveness: Downplayed. In the book, Swagger is a forty-something man who is described as looking like Clint Eastwood (who isn't bad for his age). In the film, he's played by the younger and even more handsome Mark Wahlberg.
• Adaptational Wimp: In the source novel, Nick Memphis is an established FBI agent who served as a sniper for the bureau. In the film, he's downgraded to a rookie just a couple weeks out of the academy (although he does become much more confident and skillful over the course of the film.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • In the book, Johnson/Shreck and Meechum are more Knight Templars than the corrupt men portrayed in the film.

• Dobbler is ignorant of many of the worst actions committed by his employers and ultimately helps Bob in the book. In the film he doesn't.

• Artistic License – Gun Safety: Significantly averted, as Swagger's religious care of his own rifle is a major plot point later in the film. At least two examples of this become significant plot points; see Chekhov's Gun.
• Artistic License – Military: The film can't seem to decide whether it wants to be grim, gritty and realistic or a flashy action movie. Purely in the first scene, we have
  • A sniper team lying at the exact crest of a hill where their silhouette is easiest to spot.
  • The spotter using notes in a notebook to guess the range rather than a laser rangefinder (it is however implied that he measured necessary reference points beforehand and put them on the notebook's drawing for quick reference).
  • The team not immediately relocating after having served their purpose of area denial (i.e. everyone's stopped and looks for the sniper).
  • That helicopter, after being hit in or under the motor, slowly descending in a classic movie helicopter crash rather than either locking up and tearing its rotor blades apart under the strain or killing everyone in the cockpit by shrapnel.
• Anti-Climax: Col. Johnson's death. The movie sets him as a properly badass anti-Swagger, but in the end he is easily dispatched by an unseen Swagger by being shot in the throat.
• As Long as There Is Evil: The conspiracy is a depressing modern equivalent.
  Michael Sandor: There is no head to cut off. It's a conglomerate. If one of them betrays the principles of the accrual of money and power, the others betray him. What it is is human weakness. You can't kill that with a gun.
• Assassins Are Always Betrayed: This is mentioned in the film, with a man claiming that the real killers of JFK were themselves killed and buried in the desert within hours of the assassination. The actual conspiracy plays with it: The real assassin is high ranking enough to avoid this happening immediately, but when leads on Swagger dry up he's bluntly informed he'll be used as bait to draw him out (he has after-all outlived his usefulness). Whether or not he survives this is uncertain, "that's the danger of bait after all".
• BFG: Bob's Cheyenne Tactical M200 Intervention which he supposedly used to try assassinate the president, and hit the Ethiopian archbishop, Desmond Mutumbo. Even bigger is the Barrett .50 cal he uses against the helicopter in the opening scene.
• Bald of Evil: One of the three assassins sent after Nick Memphis has one.
• Beard of Evil: The other two assassins sent after Memphis sport these.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Colonel Isaac Johnson and Senator Charles Meachum.
• Bittersweet Ending: Johnson, Meachum and their co-conspirators cannot be connected to killing Archbishop Mutumbo and cannot be held responsible for sacking the Ethiopian village since this crime occurred on another continent, but Swagger gets justice anyway by personally murdering them all and then blowing up the cabin their bodies are in. If he's able to destroy all the evidence connected to him, he won't have to go on the run and even if he does, he's prevented the group's next terrorist scheme in the process.
• Black Helicopter: The Private Military Contractors use an unmarked, heavily-armed black helicopter in an attempt to kill Swagger.
• Blasting It Out of Their Hands: Swagger makes a long-range sniper shot to blow a gun in half Payne is using to threaten his hostage; it looks like shrapnel was propelled into his hand, possibly taking off part of his finger. Subverted seconds later when, while Payne expresses admiration at the first shot, Swagger fires again and blows off his arm just below the elbow.
• Bluffing the Authorities: When Bob Lee shows up to Sarah's house, she calls 911 but immediately has a change of heart and hangs up. When they call back per procedure, she tells them that she got scared because an animal knocked over her trash cans.
• By "No", I Mean "Yes": At the climax:
  Swagger: Search [the Senator].
  Senator: I don't carry a weapon. (Memphis reaches toward him)Ordinarily. I'm licensed to carry that in this State.
  • Also heavily implied at the end by the Attorney General, who, despite giving Swagger the "this is the real world" speech about how he can't go around cleaning up the streets with gunfire, notes that in some cases that is exactly what is needed, and then lets Swagger go. Judging from Swagger's capabilities and what happened to the last guy who screwed him over, the AG had no doubts what Swagger would do if released, and more or less said, "I can't do anything about these assholes, but you can."
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • We see Bob doing something to his rifle just before he leaves for the mission. It turns out that he installed an incorrect firing pin in it, preventing it from firing and he does this to all his guns. This proves that the bullet that killed Mutumbo did not come from Bob's gun.
  • When Swagger and the government team are in place, preparing to apprehend the alleged assassin. Swagger notices the cop in the room has his service pistol unsecured and points it out.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Sarah, the wife of Swagger's late partner Donnie, who proves to be helpful to Swagger following the assassination.
• Chekhov's Skill: Donnie mentions that his wife Sarah is about to enter Medical School in the opening. Now guess who Swagger goes to once he's framed...

• Clear My Name: Swagger has to provide proof that he did not kill the Archbishop or else he will be running for the rest of his life - which the bad guys really wish to cut short.
• Cold Sniper: Bob fits this, though he does show moments of kindness. However, Sandor is downright sadistic, and is wheelchair-bound, as when his location was discovered during a battle, his opponents took no chances and targeted him with artillery. ^note Tanks have been used in the counter-sniper role in Iraq, and artillery shelling has been done to snipers since at least World War One. They don't like it and it reduces life expectancy.
• Colonel Badass/Retired Badass: Colonel (retired) Johnson. His role in the movie is more of a Smug Snake / Corrupt Bureaucrat, but at the beginning he shows Swagger a Medal of Honor. This is the highest combat decoration a US military member can receive, requires an act of Congress to issue, and it's very often awarded posthumously.
• Conspicuously Public Assassination: As mentioned in the movie, what is the best moment to kill the archbishop of Ethiopia, who will expose the atrocities that the Government Conspiracy has done for the sake of continuing to line their pockets? By shooting him dead while he's standing right next to the President of the United States, and make people believe that the shooter missed his "real" target!
• Conspiracy Theorist: Swagger, though he knows they're more than just theories. Memphis becomes one as his investigation into the shooting makes him question his own agency and he finds out about the mass murder of innocent civilians over a US-owned pipeline.
  • Exaggerated with Mr. Rate, the conspiracy expert that Bob and Nick visit:
  Mr. Rate: That's how conspiracy works. Them boys on the grassy knoll, they were dead within three hours. Buried in the damn desert. Unmarked graves out past Terlingua.
  Nick Memphis: And you know this for a fact?
  Mr. Rate: Still got the shovel!
• Crazy-Prepared: Bob's switching out of the firing pins on his rifles. Also the improvised explosives he sets up before he confronts Sandor.
• Crazy Survivalist: Bob after the Ethiopia mission.
• Decon-Recon Switch: The bad guys spend so much of their screen time gloating that they have the money and the power and whatever they do on other countries cannot affect them in America and one man with a gun cannot make a dent on this conspiracy that Swagger at the end admits they are right to a degree… but by the time the credits roll he still killed them all and no less a man than the Attorney General of the United States of America told Swagger in an indirect way that they all deserve it.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: Payne taunts Swagger, claiming that he has no shot on him (A headshot would have triggered a spasm that would have fired the shotgun pointed at Sarah). Swagger responds by shooting him in the hand, destroying the trigger. And follows up by blowing his arm off.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: An innocent man made a scapegoat for an assassination attempt on a President while the actual shooter was somewhere else entirely? Sounds a lot like Who Shot JFK?.
• Establishing Character Moment: We know Swagger's the best sniper because in the opening scene he snipes a helicopter down. Granted, the Barrett .50 cal anti-materiel rifle pretty much designed for this, but no one can doubt his marksmanship of sniping off a helicopter's swashplate while it is actively strafing him.
  • Go down to Offscreen Karma to read another establishing moment for him.
• Fake Assassination: A mysterious sniper attempted an assassination on the US President while he's doing a public speech. The President didn't get hit, but the news become engrossed in the "attempted president assassination". The twist is that later, the hero Bob finds out that the sniper's real target was the Bishop of Ethiopia (who was there with the President) all along, who was about to tell everyone about the war crimes that the real bad guy did in Ethiopia.
• Fatal Family Photo: Bob's spotter just had to show a picture of his wife before they were assaulted. It's like Antoine Fuqua wanted to step into the shot, wave at the viewers, and yell "this man is about to die!" though a megaphone. But considering the rest of the movie, it's understandable why they did it.
• Fiery Cover-Up: Swagger does this at the end of the film, breaking the gas line in the Senator's cabin after shooting them all, presumably to disguise all the bullet wounds. Once the gas hits the open flame in the fireplace...
• The Film of the Book: Based off a book by Washington Post movie critic Stephen Hunter, fairly loosely.
• Foreshadowing: Near the opening of the film, Johnson and his friends mention that the CIA guy overseeing the operation that hung Bob and his spotter out to dry died mysteriously shortly thereafter, though they never pinned anything on Bob. Guess what happens to those same men near the end of the film?
• Framing the Guilty Party: After getting a strong hint from the AG to assassinate the bad guys, Swagger goes rambo on them at an alpine retreat, killing everyone with a pistol, then planting the pistol in Johnson's cold dead hands. Then he knocks a gas valve loose and lets the fireplace do the rest. Given that the Attorney General "hinted" for Swagger to do this, it's also likely the FBI will not work too hard investigating this anyway.
• "Get Out of Jail Free" Card: In the end, Swagger is acquitted of the crime he was framed for, the assassination of Archbishop Desmond Mutumbo, by proving that the murder weapon could not have been used, thus he could not have fired it. This seems perfectly logical, but no one, not even the incognito Big Bad who was sitting right next to the war council, seems to address the fact that Swagger killed probably a bunch of men and caused untold amounts of property damage between the beginning of the film and now in his quest for vengeance.
  • Somewhat justified in that Swagger could just as easily say that he was trying to get answers, and the other guys shot at him first, and thus he was defending himself. Obviously it's Blatant Lies, but, considering none of the individuals that tried to kill him are alive to counter the argument, but they don't exist anyway.
  • There's also the fact that bad guys clean up after themselves. An FBI agent mentions that they found a downed helicopter, a lot of blood, and a shit ton of casings, but no bodies at the farmhouse shootout.
• Gorn: Especially in the shootout in the snowy mountains.
• The Government: Evil as usual. Parts of it. The scene at the end shows some of it is still working since Bob Lee shouldn't have been able to leave that quickly.
• Government Conspiracy: What Swagger, Memphis, and eventually Sarah get stumbled into, and what Johnson is part of. A cover-up of an incident involving slaughtering Ethiopian villagers so that a US-owned pipeline could be constructed in the region, led by both Johnson and a corrupt US Senator.
• Gunman with Three Names: Bob Lee Swagger. Lee may be a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald. Swagger to military joke; bullet trajectory calculations are sometimes called "SWAG" — Sophisticated Wild-Ass Guess (or Scientific Wild-Assed Guess, as said by Carlos Hathcock). Swagger is the name of a man the author knew; he borrowed it for both Swaggers.

H-P

• He Knows Too Much: Anyone who knows about or is part of the Government Conspiracy and is no longer of use to the antagonists is to be dealt with. Swagger, Memphis, the policeman who shot Swagger, everyone for them is fair game.
• Hollywood Healing: Averted. Swagger switches to shooting left handed after Sarah patches him up when he notes that his right shoulder is a bit stiff.
• Hollywood Silencer: Justified as Swagger needs to improvise in order to save Memphis, reasoning that anything is better than nothing, but not specifically needing professional equipment.
  • Though it is possible to make a homemade suppressor for a .22 rifle. The suppressor was also filled with water which would also dampen the gunshot.
• I Have Your Wife: A non-wife variant happens when the bad guys kidnap Sarah, which makes Bob realize how much he cares for her.
  Nick Memphis: I didn't know you had a woman.
  Bob Lee Swagger: Neither did I... until they took her.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Well, yes. It's part of why Memphis believes Swagger didn't commit the assassination - how could someone with said skills miss by a good two feet?
• It's Personal
  Agent Memphis: You could hire a good lawyer and I'll call the Bureau. They can work out some kind of deal. This is explainable. You can prove that you didn't shoot the Archbishop.
  Swagger: I don't think you understand. These boys killed my dog.
• Just Between You and Me: Played with. When Swagger confronts Sandor, the villain's plan has already happened. Instead, Sandor explains what they did, why they did it, and the role Swagger played in it. Also justified, in that a heavily armed kill team was coming and Sandor had to delay him until they got there. Swagger would've known if he was lying, so he had to tell the truth.
• Kick the Dog: The conspirators shoot Bob's dog when they retrieve one of his rifles from his house.
• Little Useless Gun: Averted. Swagger makes very effective use of a .22 when rescuing Memphis.
• The Moral Substitute: Sometimes called a left-wing action movie.
  • Bob is seen reading zmag.org and keeps a copy of the 9/11 commission report on his desk. In another scene, Nick is wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt.
  • Bob's deep suspicion for all things government can be explained by him losing his best friend and being left to die behind enemy lines during a mission that will never be made public. This doesn't apply to Nick, a bright-eyed FBI agent who wears a Che Guevara t-shirt. True, he needed a change of clothes after his "session" with the Colonel's torture techs, so he had to wear what he could find in a hurry, but where does one find a Che Guevara shirt in rural Tennessee?
  • Somewhat ironic since a whole chapter in the book is devoted to the media's reaction to the assassination and their twisting of the facts, which at least one columnist uses to push for a gun ban.
  • Stephen Hunter refuses to pick a side. He thinks the bureaucracy is dumb, but is in favor of it to an extent. A good example is that though he is opposed to gun bans, he is a dedicated supporter of registration.
• Ms. Fanservice:
  • The first live shot of Sarah on screen is of her in her kitchen, wearing a white pajama top with a noticeably thin weave. She spends the rest of the scene after letting in Bob Lee trying to keep her bathrobe on. She spends the majority of the movie disguised in a low-cut blouse and then in her bra, both tied up and not.
  • Alourdes is briefly seen in her nightgown in one scene.
• Murder by Mistake: Inverted. The conspirators choose to assassinate their target when he is standing next to the US President, knowing that everyone will assume it was a botched attempt on the president's life and the victim wasn't the intended target.
• Murder by Suicide: The antagonists employ a device that, when strapped to a victim's arm, uses a series of pulleys to force the victim to put a gun against their head and pull the trigger, literally physically forcing them to kill themselves. One of the operatives trying to force Memphis to "kill" himself tells him that it's worked very well before and the first thing Swagger says once he sees it is "what kind of sicko thought this up?"
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Many believe that the corrupt US Senator played by Ned Beatty was intended by the director to be a stand-in for Dick Cheney.
• Old Master: In order to answer some of his questions, Swagger enlists the help of an aging gunsmith (played by The Band drummer Levon Helm), who proceeds to steal the entire scene.
• Offscreen Karma: One part of Bob Lee Swagger's Establishing Character Moment is when the men of the Government Conspiracy read through his dossier, mentioning that the bastard Intelligence agent who left him and his friend behind enemy lines to die was "mysteriously" killed and nobody was able to pin anything on Swagger, so they gave him a honorable discharge. They're smart enough to read between the lines ("I guess he didn't consider himself expendable")...and still underestimate him.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Averted. Bob is shot in the shoulder and leg during the frame-up. He escapes, but moves with a limp. He's uses a first-aid kit to stop his bleeding. Later he makes a makeshift IV and dressing for his wounds. He still requires medical care to properly treat them, and get the bullets out. In fact, his shoulder never fully heals and he switches to shooting left handed for the rest of the film.
• Orgy of Evidence: The conspiracy's slew of clues to set-up Swagger as the killer is this, and it does drive the investigating agencies to believe that Swagger did it. The reason why Memphis doesn't believes it's Swagger at first is because:
  1. Swagger is a top-notch sniper capable of impossible shots, and there is no way he wouldn't have hit the President (the assumed target) in the conditions at the time.
  2. The evidence arrived to the government offices barely minutes after the shooting (while the crime scene was still closed and the pursuit for Swagger was still starting), making him suspicious of the absurd efficiency and speed of its delivery, compounded by the fact that nobody in his office knows where all the evidence came from.
  3. Not only did the cop that allegedly discovered Swagger provide a story that sounded a bit ridiculous to those with knowledge of sniper tactics, but the cop was shot dead in an alleged mugging just hours after giving his statement, which sounds even more suspicious.
• Playing Possum: Swagger is badly wounded after being shot twice, but as a highly trained Marine Scout Sniper he is far from disabled. He plays up his injuries so FBI Agent Memphis will get close to him, then quickly disarms him and steals his car.
• Pull the I.V.: Swagger does this to himself; he's been shot and knows he's going into shock from blood loss, so he improvises an IV set using aquarium tubing, plastic soda bottles, and a basting needle. Once he's bolused himself with a liter or so of homemade sugar-salt solution, he yanks the line out and continues on his merry badass way.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: In the book, Swagger was a Vietnam Shell-Shocked Veteran, meaning you'd need to cast Tommy Lee Jones to maintain his Action Hero status. Substituting the Gulf War enabled them to maintain the Present Day setting with a younger Swagger. The rest is translated faithfully... except the opening sequence where Swagger covers the evac of the operation Archbishop Mutumbo was killed to suppress.
• Pretty Little Headshots: Averted
  • Played Straight with the assassination shot that starts up the plot. The Technical Advisor for the film said in reality, that shot should have made Ludicrous Gibs of the poor guy. But this would have been more graphic than the filmmakers wanted.
• Private Military Contractors: Where the Mooks that aren't rogue members of the CIA come from.
• Properly Paranoid: Bob Lee Swagger is this in spades, as evidenced by the Chekhov's Gun entry. Let's expand that a bit: Taking the firing pins out of his rifles when he puts them away would be just as effective at preventing accidents or unauthorized use. But Bob goes the extra mile and replaces them with custom-modified pins that will not fire - every time he leaves home. The only reason for this would be to fool someone who was deliberately trying to frame him. Which means he planned for that exact scenario. The book makes it clear that while he agrees to work with the government to stop the assassination, he doesn't trust them, and decides to prepare for specific eventualities.^note In the book, he doesn't even do this regularly, but modifies the existing pin in the same manner after noticing his employers gathering his spent shell casings. Interestingly, the book mentions he's regularly offered assassination contracts, which he rejects both for moral and pragmatic reasons - Assassins Are Always Betrayed, and the fake firing pins would make perfect sense as a means of defending his innocence.

R-Z

• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • FBI Special Agent Alourdes Galindo, who is the only person at the FBI to listen to Memphis and help him explore his theory rather than going along with the official narrative.
  • The attorney general at the end of the film. He puts Colonel Johnson in his place during the meeting, and is clearly furious that he doesn't have the jurisdiction to go after the colonel for crimes committed in other countries; he does, however, release Swagger, and imply that the only way to get justice in some cases is outside of the bounds of the law.
• Revealing Cover-Up: When the policeman who shot at Bob dies a few days later "in a botched robbery", Nick sees right through it.
  Galindo: Bad things happen to good people.
  Nick: Yeah, not that fast, they don't.
• Room Full of Crazy: Memphis ends up compiling all of the intel related to Swagger's pastimes and achievements in his office in this manner.
• Scope Snipe: Obligatory, for a sniper movie. Happens during the mountaintop confrontation.
• Self-Surgery: Bob's initial patchup, though unusually he follows it up by seeking proper attention from a (semi-)trained nurse.
• Shown Their Work: Quite a few examples, most stemming from the semi-Backed by the Pentagon bits in the special features. In order we have:
  • Snipers taking notes on ranges for their areas of operation to quickly figure out how far a potential target is.
  • The CheyTac Intervention that Swagger shoots the can of soup with comes with a range computer to run the calculations needed for extreme range shots. In a blink-and-you-miss-it moment, you can see the computer next to Swagger when he shoots the soup can.
  • In a deleted scene, Swagger chews out Memphis for trying to buy some Woodland BDUs at the store, pointing out that they don't really know the terrain that well, or the opposition, and that using store-bought camo would have no effect against trained killers.
  • During the battle in the farm, Swagger not only shoots left handed^note  As Snipers are trained to do, but also performs a proper SPORTS^note Slap up on the Magazine, Pull the charging handle, Observe for ejection, Release the charging handle, Tap the forward assist, Squeeze the trigger on his commandeered M4 when it jams in the midst of the fire fight.
• Shoot the Fuel Tank: A helicopter is taken down by shooting a propane tank it was hovering above.
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: This is implied towards the end of the film as the protagonist tries to bring down a corrupt senator, a colonel, and a group of Private Military Contractors. The film even includes the "This is the "real world" type of speech from the Attorney General towards Bob Lee Swagger. Of course, his Exact Words are...
  "For the record, I don't like how this turned out any more than you do. But this is the world we live in. And justice does not always prevail. It's not the wild west where you can clean up the streets with a gun. Even though sometimes it's exactly what is needed... Bob Lee Swagger, you're free to go." So Swagger goes straight to the senator's cabin and shoots all of them.
• Situational Hand Switch: Bob, who's normally right handed, got his right shoulder wounded 1/3 into the movie, and has to resort to shooting with his left after that. Even after it's healed, his right shoulder becomes stiff, so he keeps using his left.
• Smokescreen Crime: The main protagonist is framed for an assassination attempt on the U.S. President's life which resulted in the death of the Ethiopian archbishop, Desmond Mutumbo. It turns out that the archbishop was the real target all along, as he was threatening to expose a massacre in an Ethiopian village committed by the villains. Since killing Mutumbo would've resulted in an investigation as to why someone would want him dead, the villains made it look like he was an unintended victim in an attempt to kill the president.
  Mikhaylo Sczerbiak: You want to take all suspicions away when you shoot someone, wait till he's standing next to the President.
• Smug Snake: Col. Johnson just can't resist rubbing it in.
  "I win. You lose. Again."
• Sniper Rifle: Being a former Marine Corps sniper, Swagger naturally owns and uses a number of rifles throughout the film. In fact, Swagger's religious care of his own Intervention Sniper rifle becomes a major plot point.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Attorney General Russert gets a great line about why Colonel Johnson must stay for the proceedings. Possibly doubles as Badass Bureaucrat:
  Colonel Johnson: What the hell am I doing here? You've got nothing on me. I'm covered. Call the Joint Chief.
  Attorney General Russert: That won't be necessary, Colonel, as I have already received no less than a dozen calls from highly-ranked and powerfully-placed individuals telling me to let you go. But the joy of checks and balances in our government is that I can, and am, indeed, required by law, to tell them to fuck off.
• Spotting the Thread:
  • Nick Memphis is tipped off that something isn't quite right when the government investigation into the Ethiopian Arch-Bishop is too efficient. To be exact, despite the scene of the shooting still being locked down twelve minutes after the shooting - with FBI helicopters yet to begin pursuit, the ballistics report arrives just ten minutes later.
    Nick Memphis: We work for the federal government. We're not that good at our jobs.
    • The first thing that tips him off that something's wrong is that nobody has any idea where any of the massive amount of evidence he's been examining actually came from, simply that it showed up.
  • Nick was also able to see right through Timmons' story of seeing a rifle barrel sticking out of a window. And correctly points out that no sniper does that. They instead, sit back further in the room, and shoot from there, which reduces the risk of getting hit by return fire from enemy soldiers.
    • Although Nick does not mention it, there is a second reason for that: if the gun is far from the window, it reduces the sound that reaches outside, and helps conceal muzzle flash.
  • Nick also correctly deduces that someone as highly skilled a sniper as Swagger simply couldn't miss by such a wide margin, since he's capable of shooting a silver dollar at 1000ft, with a maximum spread of 1 and a half inches. How does a man capable of that manage to miss by over 2 feet at 2000 yards?
• Took a Level in Badass: Nick goes from befuddled FBI rook to a useful ally for Swagger. This was better-explained in the book, where Nick was an ex-sniper who'd quit after a Heroic BSoD. Partly justified, as he would have had some weapons training, there is a brief scene of Swagger training him, and Swagger does most of the heavy lifting anyway.
• This Means War!: Swagger got upset when they framed him for trying to kill the President and tried to kill him. But he really declared war when they killed his dog!
• Training Montage: Nick Memphis goes from rookie FBI agent to a sniper thanks to a lesson by Bob.
• Trap Is the Only Option: The villains eventually leak the location of the real sniper as bait. Swagger only needs to take one look at the isolated ranch to know it's a trap, but decides he needs answers anyways. As predicted, a small army of fully-kitted mercenaries come for him, but Swagger in turn shows he's ready for them, with the copious amounts of homemade teargas, pipe bombs, and napalm he left dropped along the way.
• Unflinching Walk: At the end when Swagger blows up Senator Meachum's cabin
  • Though careful observation does show Wahlberg flinching slightly at the moment of detonation.
  • Another example is when the mercenaries helicopter crashes, both Bob and Nick keep running without giving the explosion a glance.
• Unwitting Pawn:
  • Swagger is not pleased to find out he and Donnie were left behind in Ethiopia after covering the retreat of a convoy which, he later learns, had come back from slaughtering a village.
  • And when Swagger is approached to supposedly plan how a sniper would assassinate the president.
• Varying Competency Alibi: One of the reasons Memphis realizes Swagger isn't guilty is because the latter would not have missed if he were truly aiming for the president. As it turns out, the Ethiopian Archbishop was the real target all along.
• Vigilante Execution: After his release, Swagger hunts down the villains, who have gotten away with everything, and kills them in their cabin — before making the entire thing look like a gas explosion. Bonus points for the Attorney General basically hinting that he should do that, knowing that there was no legal recourse, and knowing very well that if the protagonist were to be released from custody, he would almost immediately go after the villains.
  AG: For the record, I don't like how this turned out any more than you do. But this is the world we live in. And justice does not always prevail. It's not the Wild West where you can clean up the streets with a gun...even though sometimes it's exactly what is needed. Bob Lee Swagger, you're free to go.
• Who Shot JFK?
  Mr. Rate: That's how a conspiracy works. Them boys on the Grassy Knoll they were dead within three hours, buried in the damned desert, unmarked graves out past Terlingua.
  Nick Memphis: You know this for a fact?
  Mr. Rate: Still got the shovel...
• Wrongful Accusation Insurance: As soon as Bob was able to prove that the FBI's evidence against him was fake, he was free to go. This is in spite of his merciless slaughter of henchmen, soldiers, and military snipers. Sure, it was in self defense and in defense of Memphis, but his high-influence political enemies had no reason not to nail him for it. It really helps, however, that everyone he killed did not legally exist; The henchmen who tortured Memphis had been declared legally dead years before; the army that ambushed him at the cabin were an American-trained Chilean death squad mercenary unit who weren't even authorized to be in the US, let alone carrying state-of-the-art weapons and flying a helicopter gunship; and the snipers on the mountain were just more mercenary henchmen. If The Government came down on Swagger, they'd be acknowledging the existence of an entire organization of state-sponsored terrorists, a scandal that would make Watergate look like the President was hit by a pie. They probably were planning to "neutralize" Bob themselves, but he drew first.
  • Of course, Swagger murdering the heads of the conspiracy, including a senator, in cold blood after traveling to their lodge might be a little harder to explain away, but he covered his tracks pretty well on that one.

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