Despite a performance from Mark Wahlberg that reminds one of Matt Damon in The Bourne Supremacy, Antoine Fuqua's action thriller hasn't anything like the class of Paul Greengrass's work.

It's a by-numbers effort, good-looking, and making some attempt to catch hold of the present feeling that America isn't doing justice to its better instincts. But second-rate by the best standards.

Wahlberg is Swagger, an expert marksman who loses his best friend in an abortive Ethiopian mission and retires to stroke his dog. Reluctantly, he is persuaded by a CIA colonel (Danny Glover) to help save the life of the President, threatened with assassination by murky power brokers.

The attempted murder goes wrong - and Swagger is confused for the would-be killer. From then on in, the power brokers get murkier and murkier, and higher and higher up the pecking order, too. Our hero, twice wounded, has to appeal to his best friend's girl (Kate Mara) to shelter him.

Shooter has car chases, explosions and a lot of shooting, but not much in the way of decent dialogue. Wahlberg, however, strides through his part with some dignity as if determined to show that, despite the cardboard characters surrounding him, he can be accounted a real human being.