I finally got around to watching Shooter last night. I’d mentioned the movie in an earlier post because Front Sight trained Mark Walberg to be a sniper. Well if you watch the Making Of special feature on the DVD you’ll see a lot of Front Sight. The main sniper consultant on the film was a Front Sight instructor and former Marine sniper.

I’ve never mentioned before that Front Sight is more than a training facility. It is also an organization dedicating to changing the view of the culture towards firearms and firearm ownership. They are focused on doing this in the media, which is why they offer this kind of training for free to celerities, among other things.

Other than the Front Sight stuff, the movie was actually quite good. The director said they were going for a masculine, “muscular” movie. They didn’t want it to be politically correct – though the politics we very anti-government/blood for oil. The feeling of the movie reminded me of First Blood. Not what Rambo became, but that first movie where he was a pushed till he had to use his training to make things right. There is a seen where Bob Swaggert – the main character – gives himself a saline drip with a marinading needle that very much reminded me of Rambo stitching himself up.

The plot was good, and some of the twists and turns were interesting. The scene with Swaggert in the conference room at the end I didn’t seen coming. The gun stuff was good and very realistic to me. The sniper guy said they handled the main assassination scene wrong, because a 50 cal bullet hitting someone’s head from over a mile would be too gruesome to show in the movie.

So if you are looking for a DVD rental, Shooter is recommended.