Directed by Antoine Fuqua

Written by Jonathan Lemkin

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Michael Peña, Kate Mara and Danny Glover

124 min. in CinemaScope

Imagine a three-way between “Dirty” Harry Callahan, Paul “Death Wish” Kersey and Jason Bourne and you’ll have a good idea where your $10 will go.

Shooter is a vigilante-style espionage thriller that’s diverting enough in spite of its high predictability quotient. Mark Wahlberg, his Oscar not yet engraved, plays ex-government marksman Bob Lee Swagger. A disastrous peace-keeping mission that cost him a partner, forces Bob Lee into a self-imposed, 36-month mountain exile with his dog.

While 90 percent of the twists are telegraphed, the obvious curtain shot with Swagger and pooch reunited in a flood of tears and slobber never materializes. Credit the screenwriter for having the guts to kill the mutt (off-screen) somewhere around reel three.

Playing on Swagger’s patriotism, Colonel Issac Johnson (Danny Glover affecting a “thuffering thuccotash” lisp) flashes his Congressional Medal of Honor in hope of luring the patriotic rifleman from retirement. Johnson asks Swagger to call on his killer instincts to outwit a probable presidential assassin.

During target practice, a can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew stands in for the president’s head. Not a bad substitute, but a can of Bush’s Baked Beans would have added desperately needed comic relief.

After the inevitable double-cross, and an unexpected car wash cauterizing, a framed-for-murder Swagger travels to Kentucky in search of his former partner’s widow (Kate Mara). Michael Peña is the CIA agent who not only proves Swagger’s innocence, he joins him and suddenly we have a buddy picture.

Why does every male-oriented action film have to have an intrusive boy-meets-girl subplot? In her first scene, Ms. Mara is directed to draw attention to her breasts by constantly trying to hide them from Swagger. After that, no bra can contain them.

Worse yet, the women in these types of films are never more than designated hostages. In Shooter’s case, Ms. Mara goes undercover as a floozy, and is both sexually assaulted and physically brutalized (mostly off-screen).

The most repugnant aspect of the film is the presence of Ned Beatty. While guesting on the “Tomorrow Show” in the ’70s, host Tom Snyder asked the porcine Deliverance power-bottom to verify a rumor that was an anti-Semite. Without missing a beat, Beatty openly expressed his disregard for “those people.” Is it any wonder that this Oscar, Emmy and Golden Globe nominee seldom finds employment in Hollywood?

The film works best whenever there’s action on the screen. With Training Day, King Arthur and now Shooter, director Antoine Fuqua continues to display a vast knowledge of genre conventions without once transcending them.

Directed by Brian Cook

Written by Anthony Frewin

Starring: John Malkovich, Jim Davidson, Richard E. Grant and Luke Mably

For 30 years, Brian Cook worked for Stanley Kubrick, first as an assistant director and eventually a producer. If imitation is indeed the most sincere form of failure, it stands to reason that Cook’s debut feature is a sorry masquerade.

Shame on me for not running the title through imdb.com prior to the preview; I went in half-expecting a documentary. Never a Kubrick cultist, largely on account of the putrid A Clockwork Orange, imagine my delight in a based-on-truth biopic that painted the overrated icon as a venal, racist Roger Debris who abuses his power to get young men in bed.

The giddiness quickly came to a halt when it was revealed that this was more Six Degrees of Stanley Kubrick than Stash Dearest. It’s based on the life of Alan Conway, a sleazy parasite who for months preyed on England’s pub circuit, passing himself off as the legendary filmmaker.

It was easy: Kubrick was almost as big a recluse as Howard Hughes. Most people didn’t know his face; he never granted interviews and precious few recordings of his voice exist. At one point in the film, then New York Times theater critic Frank Rich (William Hootkins) and his wife (Barry Lyndon star Marisa Berenson) have to hunt down a copy of Who’s Who? to find a photo. One would think that by the early ’90s the Times’ photo morgue would have housed at least one promo still of the celebrated director.

Conway’s marks were a band of gullible toadies sporting dollar signs for irises, all eager and willing to do anything to become the next Hal 2000. If the script is accurate, how did his victims buy into Conway’s inane line of bullshit? According to Conway’s con, Otto Preminger directed Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah, Moe Green (Alex Rocco in The Godfather) was his Vegas contact and Catskills comic Shecky Green his man in New York. His malapropos-laced namedropping would raise doubts with anyone possessing an ounce of showbiz smarts.

In-jokes abound. Everyone refers to him as “Koo-brick” instead of the proper “Q-brick.” One fan goes so far as thanking him for making Stanley Kramer’s Judgment at Nuremberg. Better pack a full metal helmet, though. When Walter Carlos plays beneath a couple of thugs in bowlers and Thus Spoke Zarathustra accompanies “Stanley’s” trip to the Laundromat, the tributes quickly dissolve into a brick-throwing festival.

Cook paid strict attention to his mentor’s framing and cinematographer John Alton’s sensuous steadicam work. He should have kept a tighter leash on John Malkovich. On the surface, everything from his Garry Marshall-inspired Brooklynese accent to the rope belt underneath his carelessly knotted shirttails seemed in place. For the first time in memory, Malkovich’s instincts failed him (and us).

If nothing else, the film did introduce me to this superb dollop of bile, courtesy of Gore Vidal: “The only people who enjoy themselves in the theater are on the stage.” If only the rest of the script were that witty.

Written and directed by Mike Binder

Starring: Adam Sandler, Don Cheadle, Liv Tyler and Donald Sutherland

124 min. in CinemaScope

Rejoice! With his first full-blown dramatic performance, Adam Sandler has finally given us reason to laugh. It would have been a lot funnier had the subject matter managed to avoid trivializing the families of 9/11 victims.

Charlie (Sandler) is (what else?) a stunted adult who tools around New York on a gas powered scooter, is addicted to video games and plays drums in a punk band. Not your usual baby-talking water boy or wedding singer, Charlie suffers from post- traumatic stress disorder resulting from his family being on one of the planes that flew into the World Trade Center.

Compared to Charlie, his former college roommate Alan Johnson (Don Cheadle) is all grown up. He’s a successful dentist who is semi-happily married to Jada Pinkett Smith. Even though he loathes the thought of such mundane tasks as taking photography classes with the family or completing a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle with his wife, pussy-whipped Alan refuses to stray.

It is not as though he didn’t have a chance. Alan attracts the ladies more for his virility than his veneers. Try as she might, recently divorced Saffron Burrows just can’t convince Alan of her need to polish his crown. Her character and a subsequent bogus sexual harassment suit are both planted early on, so when it comes time in reel six to find a mate for Charlie, there’s a horny broad waiting in the wings.

When they first meet by accident, Charlie pretends not to know Alan. Much of his memory was wiped out by the tragedy, yet he still remembers sleeping nude in college and the size of Johnson’s Johnson. This is made even more uncomfortable when, after Alan refuses to call home and ask if he can stay out all night at a Mel Brooks marathon, Charlie calls him a “faggot.”

The rest is painfully contrived except for five minutes toward the end when Donald Sutherland shows up and does some real acting. Sandler stinks and sadly the same can be said for the writing and direction.

Mike Binder already managed to pull off the impossible: He coaxed a superb comic performance out of Joan Allen in The Upside of Anger. He never should have given Sandler free reign.