This isn't a 'review' ... I'm just a pencil-necked Geek and have no pretention to critical capability. But I did mention that I was planning to see the Hollywood treatement of Stephen Hunter's initial "Bob the Nailer" movie, and I thought I owed it to myself to fulfill the implied promise (to myself) to voice my impressions.
The book (Point of Impact) was first published in February of 1993, about 20 years after the end of the Vietnam War. That would have made Bob Lee Swagger about 39 years old, and assumes he would still be active and in the prime of his life.
It's now 2007, and if the story were presented (as Hollywood decided it should be) as a 'contemporary' movie, Bob would be over 60 years old and he would look a lot like ... me. Not a terribly intimidating figure of a man, and certainly not an action hero.
So instead of a Marine Sniper in the late Vietnam era, they changed him to a Marine Sniper in an Ethiopian "Black Operation" ... circa approximately 2004.
Okay, I can live with that.
They changed Bob's territory from Arkansas to Vietnam. His spotter, Donny, is married to a woman named "Sarah" instead of "Julie", and instead of being a nurse she is a schoolteacher.
Okay, I can live with that too.
Place names were changed (for instance, the 'presidential speech' takes place in Philidelpha instead of New Orleans). Nick Memphis is not a 10-year veteran FBI failed sniper, but three weeks out of the FBI Academy. You'll see a lot more details, and entire chapters, either changed or entirely omitted.
That only proves that the detail ... including hundreds of pages of explanation and motivation ... is much easier to present in novel form than in book form.
Still, even in this much abridged and abreviated form, most of the essential elements remain. They're merely reduced to two-dimension glossy instead of rich exposition and the glorious, colorful exposition of an excellent wordsmith such as Stephen Hunter.
I have four major complaints, though.
First, Hollywood can't resist taking Liberal digs at the current administration, such as the real Presidential Sniper's comments suggesting that the Abu Grahib affair only prosecuted/penalized the 'little people'. In reality, they relieved a General, so the presumption is that the fault went as far as the White House.
Second, the scene at the country house of the real Presidential Sniper ("Michael Sandor" ... his character's real name is not memorable by Americans who expect fewer consonants in a name) is centered on improvised munitions rather than true sniper ability.
Third, the penultimate denoument of the movie does recognize Bob's defense that the supposed sniper weapon he used in the frame-up is inoperable, but he mentions that he has replaced the firing pin of ALL of his rifles ... "I do that every time I use them". That suggests a level of paranoia which is inconsistent with The Original Bob.
Fourth and finally, the last scene of the movie has Bob ambushing The Senator, The Colonel, and their remaining henchmen in a mountain cabin, in an orgy of cold blooded murder which I find appalling. This lends entirely too much credence to the Liberal image of gunowners as unbalanced, antisocial individualists who are potential murderers.
Go ahead and watch the movie. Stephen Hunter deserves the money, even the movie you see isn't the story he wrote. That's not a surprise; at least, not as much as that the film stars a felon who is forbidden by law to as much as touch a firearm (Mark Wahlberg) and who incidently has made public anti-gun statements, and Danny Glover (who is apparently an outspoken anti-gun spokesman.)
The only real surprise is that they didn't cast Michael Douglas as "The Senator". That would have completed the triumvirant.
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