19 Years Later, Mark Wahlberg's 124-Minute Action Thriller Officially Shoots Onto Free Streaming

Published Nov 1, 2026, 5:01 PM EST Simon Gallagher has worked in movie and TV journalism for more than 17 years. He has written more than 6000 articles and reviews, and edited thousands more. He is an expert in the entertainment industry, particularly in the golden age of screen superheroes. Simon is also a Rotten Tomatoes approved critic. It’s hard to overstate how much Jason Bourne rewired the action genre between 2002 and 2007. Not only did Matt Damon’s charmingly forgetful spy deconstruct - and subsequently - reconstruct James Bond, but he killed off the muscle-bound action monsters of the 1990s and made way for a grittier, more grounded hero. Bourne also made everyman action heroes like Mark Wahlberg more of a viable consideration in the 2000s. By the very late 1990s, Wahlberg was already making action thrillers, of course, but the appetite for his particular brand of exhausted, working-class hero suddenly snapped into focus on the back of Bourne’s success. He’s also made a good living blending comedy and action more recently, of course, but back in 2007, he was still playing cops, gangsters, and soldiers with a job to do. That year, mid-budget action thrillers were also still allowed to exist alongside the shaky-cam Bourne copycats, and Wahlberg’s grounded take on normal guys driven by their convictions was at its peak. He’d just been famously and rightly nominated for an Oscar for The Departed, and had James Gray’s misunderstood crime drama We Own The Night in the pipeline, but before that came an underrated action gem that has since gone on to enjoy success on streaming basically every time it’s added to a major platform. In 2007, he teamed up with Antoine Fuqua for Shooter, an adaptation of Stephen Hunter’s novel Point of Impact, which is a great commercial for everything great about mid-2000s action cinema. Released against a crowded spring slate, and underrated by critics, it was a great addition to Wahlberg’s movie resume, and fans can now enjoy it all over again without having to pay for any sort of subscription, as it’s just been added to Tubi. Shooter Is Everything You Need From A Mark Wahlberg Action Thriller Consider the best Mark Wahlberg movies. For most of his best performances, he plays a guy who wants to be left alone, but who ends up with an arm forced up his back. He plays annoyed, disgruntled, and frankly pissed off better than almost anyone - including Jason Statham - and watching him win has a sort of guaranteed catharsis to it that you don’t get with more polished action heroes. Which is exactly the point. In Shooter, Wahlberg is a different breed of hero than the guys who just take up arms in desperate circumstances, but the vibe is still very much there. As former Force Recon Scout Sniper, Bob Lee Swagger, he’s a trained, precise weapon who is called out of retirement to help prevent an assassination attempt on the President and instead ends up embroiled in a plot to implicate him. There are some heavy Bourne parallels as the wonderfully-named Swagger takes on corrupt government and military leaders and is forced to rely both on his training and his resourcefulness. Swagger isn’t quite Bourne, but Wahlberg plays him as a similar wrong-man-in-the-crosshairs energy, while retaining a calm precision that fits his background, as well as his trademark raw emotion. Director Antoine Fuqua brings great intensity, as ever, and an increasingly colorful plot is anchored both by Wahlberg (and co-star Michael Peña’s) charm and some great set pieces. It’s basically everything a fan would want from a Wahlberg action joint: high-stakes tension, a touch of brutality, and a burning desire for rough justice. Mark Wahlberg Trained With A Marine Sniper To Get Shooter Right Almost two decades on from its release, Shooter seems to earn new fans every year, regularly hitting the top 10 for new streaming platforms when it lands. It’s likely to do the same now that it’s part of Tubi's new free movies list. And part of the reason, beyond Wahlberg’s gritty charm, is that it shows the same sort of attention to detail that Fuqua would later bring to The Terminal List universe. He wanted his star to look the part: not just like an actor holding a gun. Fuqua needed Wahlberg to look natural handling a weapon, so that his credentials as Swagger were never in doubt. As a result, Wahlberg worked with former U.S. Marine Scout Sniper Patrick Garrity, who was hired as the official military-technical advisor on Shooter, and put time in with the lead individually. He put Wahlberg through an intense boot camp at Front Sight Firearms Training Institute, equipping him with invaluable knowledge of long-range ballistics, camouflage, tactical movement, and the reality of shooting targets from over a thousand yards away. He was trained to an immaculate degree to think like a sniper, by learning the details of what it took to be one and it shows in Shooter. That commitment to precision - which admittedly didn’t stop one military expert from criticizing the way Wahlberg reloads in Shooter - didn’t compromise the action or the tension, but it means the movie has aged very well, and you can see that for yourself on Tubi now. Shooter is available to stream completely free on Tubi now. Release Date March 22, 2007 Runtime 124 Minutes Director Antoine Fuqua Cast Michael Pena Nick Memphis Shooter is an action thriller directed by Antoine Fuqua. Mark Wahlberg stars as Bob Lee Swagger, a retired Marine sniper who is wrongfully accused of attempting to assassinate the President. Forced to flee, Swagger must use his skills to uncover the real culprits and clear his name.