Shooter

Sound:
The Blu-ray release of "Shooter" contains an English Dolby Digital 5.1 multi-channel surround mix, as well as accompanying French and Spanish tracks. This is the same lineup as the DVD release, but the mixes contained here have a little more oomph and depth to them. At least the English track does, I didn´t spend any time listening to the foreign language tracks. "Shooter" is a solid sounding film, but underwhelming when compared to the legions of other action films. The film does provide a few very nice moments, especially the opening moments that takes place in Africa and then Swagger´s raid on the two farmhouses at different moments in the film. "Shooter" is a dialogue based film and the clean and intelligible dialogue takes center stage, but when the action heats up there is a few nice effects to be heard. A few gunshots in "Shooter" sounded great and were far more realistic on the high definition format that what was heard on the DVD release. Mark Mancina´s soundtrack could be heard in all 5.1 channels and was nicely rendered by the soundtrack, with purposeful bass and effective usage of the rear surrounds. The surrounds themselves are used throughout the picture and often used to effectively create atmosphere, such as when a sniper´s bullet travels through the air.

Extras:
"Shooter" is not billed as a special feature, but the disc does contain a number of nice supplements. The Blu-ray release features all of the value added content in high definition video. The first and most important feature is the Commentary by Director Antoine Fuqua. The director speaks about his experiences making the film, provides background and information pertaining to the sniping elements in the film and also draws parallel´s to his previous effort, "Training Day." Fuqua does sit back a couple times to enjoy his film, but he does get into the topics of "Shadow Military" and a few other fascination topics that makes this commentary a little more than being a simply play-by-play of the film. This track was definitely worth listening to.

After the very good commentary, there are a few stand-alone supplements. The somewhat lengthy Survival of the Fittest: The Making of Shooter (21:49) is your typical EPK featurette. There is music. There are scenes from the film and there are lots of moments with those involved in delivering the picture to the big screen. The author of the book Point of Impact in which the story is based, Stephen Hunter, provides background on the story during the film. This added some nice back information on snipers that made the feature worth sitting down with. Independence Hall (7:20) was a vignette that looked at the scene that takes place at Independence Hall and has a military advisor giving a breakdown of the shot a sniper would have. The seven Deleted Scenes (11:50) spends a lot of time fleshing out the Nick Memphis character, but also adding information that was heard of during the film, but not seen. A few Previews complete the offerings.

Closing Comments:
I originally had a lot of interest in watching "Shooter" because of its focus on a Marine sniper and the fact I saw a fifty caliber Barrett in the trailer. The hardware was cool and some of the information on shooting was accurate, but it didn´t seem like a lot of attention to detail was made during a few scenes. The action was still good and both Wahlberg and Pena were good in their roles. Veterans Danny Glover, Elias Koteas and Ned Beatty were nice additions to the cast. Kate Mara is a lovely young lady and her inclusion was an added bonus. Although I was not blown away by the film and I felt some degree of disappointment, I was entertained. The Blu-ray release is a definite upgrade over the standard definition release and features improved sight and sound. The film didn´t have near the energy in soundtrack and a few visual flaws were present on DVD, but this is a livelier sounding release and more detailed and cleaner in visuals. The supplements are the same, but are now mastered in high definition. This is definitely a better way to enjoy the film.

---

---