Shooter: Season 1 - DVD Review

[Michael Scott]

Shooter: Season 1

Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score: ​

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Movie
I have to admit that Shooter was one of my very first HD titles (on HD-DVD for $35 when it came out) and it is a hilariously fun guilty pleasure. Yeah I get it, the movie is not exactly a modern classic, but Michael Pena and Marky Mark gave it a style and charm that was a lot of fun, and having Antoine Fuqua at the helm is NOTHING to sneeze at (the man knows his action movies). I put my Blu-ray in every once in a while when I want to have a good time, so I was more than eager to check out USA’s new adaptation of the original source material (Books written by Steven Hunter). Interestingly enough enough, they didn’t try and take any of the OTHER books about Bob Lee Swagger (now played by Ryan Phillippe), but instead replicated Shooter adapting “Point of Impact” for its first season. Which basically means that the very first season of Shooter is a near perfect replica of the film, with just some gender swaps for certain characters, and some light padding of the story line to fill out ten 42 minute episodes.

If you’ve seen the movie then you know what season one of the show is going to hold. Bob Lee Swagger is an ex marine sniper who has gone underground as much as possible after the death of his spotter, Donny (Rob Brown). That is until an old Marine Captain of his named Isaac Johnson (Omar Epps) comes to ask him for his expertise in the field. They have word that the crack sniper who killed Donny is in the U.S. and looking to take out the President of the United States. If Bob Lee can come help them with his tactical expertise and try and find the shooters location, they stop it before it ever happens. The whole thing turns out to be a setup a rogue CIA agent (Tom Sizemore), and a whole conspiracy is revealed when the sniper actually shoots the Ukranian President at the summit and all of Bob’s “scouting” is used as evidence that he’s the actual killer.

Now Bob Lee is on the run and desperate to prove that he’s innocent. His only allies are his wife Julie (Shantel VanSanten), and an FBI agent named Nadine Memphis (Cynthia Addai-Robinson, previously Michael Pena’s character in the film) who is on the ragged edge at the agency. Bob now has to do what he does best, hunt those who are hunting him and find out what they know.

The first season of Shooter feels like the movie down to a T, except Ryan Phillipe is much harder nosed and more serious than Marky Mark’s boyish charm. Bob Lee Swagger is a jack of all trades Marine, with skills as a sniper, an undercover agent, a hand to hand combat master, as well as trained tactical strategist. The show plays out a lot like The Fugitive blended with the movie Shooter, and actually is quite a lot of fun. The only PROBLEM (and it’s not a real problem as much as familiarity overload) is that it really just remakes the film for the first season beat for beat. There’s some gender changes with familiar names, and some additional characters (such as his wife Julie and their daughter), but the season is VERY familiar if you’ve seen the movie.

Now that’s not a horrible thing as the show is quite decent, I just feel that the show runners would have been better off using one of Steven Hunter’s OTHER books about Bob Lee Swagger instead of using the one used for the film. Either that or changed up enough to make it less similar to the same titled movie. With my complaints about that, I actually took the time to start watching season 2 of Shooter this last month and confirm that they’re deviating and changing it up quite a bit with influences from another novel from Hunter, which means the show has a lot of potential as the casting is solid and the action more than capable.




Rating:

Not Rated by the MPAA




Video:

The first season of Shooter comes to DVD from Universal Studios in the standard 1.78:1 framing in Mpeg2 encoding. The disc looks very good for a 480p show, and gives off that “USA Network” vibe that used in Burn Notice, Covert Affairs etc. Colors are warm and cheery, and the flashbacks to the old Marine days of Bob Lee and his buddies is given a cool blue tone to differentiate it from the rest of the show. There’s a lot of skullduggery and dark corners, so black levels are pretty imperative, and despite some mild crush it shows off more than enough shadow detail to the naked eye. Skin tones look balanced, and contrast levels are never pushed too high. A good looking DVD encode for sure.







Audio:

The 5.1 mix is more than capable of pulling off the action oriented nature of the show, and balances a tight rope between dialog heavy drama, and bursts of action with heavy gunfire and the resounding “thump” of a sniper rifle. Motorcycle chases, drones flying overhead, and gunfire all ring with authority, but they also can soften up quite a bit when Bob Lee is whispering to his wife Julie, or talking with agent Memphis in the background. The music numbers fill out the back end a good bit as well, and LFE is punchy, if not a bit simplistic.
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Extras:

• The Making of Shooter

Final Score: ​

Shooter: Season 1 is off to a rocky start by employing “imitation is the highest form of flattery” a bit TOO much, in the 10 episode arc, but the potential is there to grow and the 2nd season appears to have learned from the mistakes of the first. Ryan Phillippe is a great Bob Lee Swagger (actually more true to the character than Mark Wahlberg) and Omar Epps makes for the perfect nemesis to him. The show looks and sounds like most new TV shows coming from USA channel, and those technical specs are well done on the 2 disc DVD set Universal had put out. The show has almost no extras (as most shows seem to be doing nowadays), but it’s still a solid watch if you’re a fan of USA’s action oriented shows like Burn Notice and Covert Affairs. Solid Watch.



Technical Specifications:

Starring: Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Ryan Phillippe, Shantel VanSanten
Created by: John Hlavin
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 MPEG 2
Audio: English: Dolby Digital 5.1
Studio: Universal
Rated: NR
Runtime: 416 Minutes
DVD Release Date: June 13th, 2017

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• Michael Scott
• May 11, 2017

Recommendation: Solid Watch

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. I don't have cable/sat so will check this out.