Mark Wahlberg films have been having a moment on Netflix lately. After the adult comedy Ted, this week the surprise stinker storming the Netflix charts is a Mark Wahlberg action from 2007.
Directed by Antoine Fuqua, Shooter tells the tale of Bob Lee Swagger (Wahlberg), a retired Marine sniper forced back into the field after being framed for an assassination attempt. Determined to clear his name, Swagger becomes entangled in an adrenaline-fueled game of cat and mouse.
Apart from Wahlberg, the cast of Shooter included Michael Peña as Nick Memphis, Danny Glover as Colonel Isaac Johnson, Kate Mara as Sarah Fenn, Elias Koteas as Jack Payne, Rhona Mitra as Alourdes Galindo, and Rade Šerbedžija as Mikhaylo Sczerbiak, aka Michael Sandor.
The supporting cast included Levon Helm as Mr Rate, Ned Beatty as Senator Charles F. Meachum, Tate Donovan as Russ Turner, and Louis Ferreira (credited as Justin Louis) as Howard Purnell.
Shooter has surged in popularity on Netflix, earning the fifth spot on the global top ten list. It has maintained its position on the list for two consecutive weeks, accumulating an impressive 7.48 million hours of viewing time.
At the time of its release, Manohla Dargis of The New York Times had called the film “a thoroughly reprehensible, satisfyingly violent entertainment about men and guns and things that go boom.” But she had also found it “pretty enjoyable.”
Jennifer Lopez’s The Mother, which was released over the Mother’s Day weekend, is dominating the charts and has been going strong for four weeks now. The Boss Baby is in second place. It has been inching towards the top slowly for six weeks now. It is quite possible tired parents have been using it to keep their toddlers engaged while they quickly get some ‘me time’ in.
The other films accompanying Shooter this week are Missing, 2 Hearts, We’re the Millers, Dirty Grandpa, To Leslie, The Choice, F9: The Fast Saga.
