The Marksman

Robert Lorenz’s film carried the title The Minuteman through production and was announced under it in May 2019. Lorenz spent years producing for Clint Eastwood and moved into the director’s chair in 2012 with Trouble with the Curve; this is his second feature. Jim Hanson is a Vietnam veteran and a former Marine Corps scout sniper; a widower, behind on the payments on his ranch, and the border patrol he calls about crossings employs his stepdaughter Sarah. The film introduces him through those three facts, not his marksmanship. The story starts on the Arizona border and ends in Chicago, but most of it was shot in Ohio: Lorain, Portage and Cuyahoga counties, Cleveland and Chardon. New Mexico was used too, and filming finished in October 2019. The oddest number here is at the box office. It opened in January 2021, with many cinemas still shut, in 1,975 theatres, took 3.7 million dollars over the four day Martin Luther King weekend to finish first, and stayed there the weekend after. A good fit if it matters to you that Hanson is introduced through a ranch he cannot keep paying for, so the action starts on an economic floor. Not for anyone who does not want to watch a dog killed; the film puts that in the middle of an escape.