Based on a novel by Stephen Hunter, never heard of him. Directed by Antoine Fuqua, never heard of him. Looking him up on IMDB, he's directed alot of music videos. You can see it in the movie too, lots of quick visuals and no story.The acting was pretty bad. Marky Mark was ok, but he wasn't given much to work with. Elias Koteas, an actor I usually really like even disappointed, his character seemed to not have a solid sense of himself. I'll say that about all the characters, and probably blame the director for that. Ned Beatty, Danny Glover, Michael Peña... all seemed to change from scene to scene.
The basic story was good, but went off in the wrong directions. There were too many awkward references to topical events, as though they were put in to make people think it was intellectual and socially conscious.
The action was over the top. Initially plausible, but then Bobby Lee became almost a superhero , Ramboesque character. If you want to have a story appear realistic, you can't raise the characters to an infallible level.
Fuqua directed Tears of the Sun, a movie I've wanted to see, so I'll look at some more of his movies before forming an opinion of his work. Stephen Hunter's books get good reviews and his The 47th Samurai seems interesting, so I'll have to give it a try.
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