The Incomparable Levon Helm as Mr. Rate

Mark Wahlberg has the title role in the sniper thriller, Shooter. He gets to be the hero, and as Bobby Lee Swagger, he has most of the zingiest lines.

Until, that is, his character -- a sniper framed in an assassination attempt -- shows up to collect some wisdom from an old man of the mountains, a Tennessee assassination expert. He's played to Southern-fried perfection by Levon Helm. And Helm flat out steals his scene.

Bob Lee Swagger: Suppose I was looking for man who could make a 2,200 yard cold bore shot. Who's alive that could do that?
Mr. Rate: Seems I heard about a shot like that being made not too long ago. Said the guy's name was Bob Lee Swagger. Never met the man, so I wouldn't know.
Bob Lee Swagger: Yeah, they said that alright.
Mr. Rate: They also said that artificial sweeteners were safe, WMDs were in Iraq and Anna Nicole married for love.

Mr. Rate: It woulda been a bad job to take though.
Nick Memphis: How come?
Mr. Rate: Whoever took that shot's probably dead now. That's how a conspiracy works. Them boys on the Grassy Knoll they were dead within three hours, buried in the damned desert, unmarked graves out past Terlingua.
Nick Memphis: You know this for a fact?
Mr. Rate: Still got the shovel.

Helm has lent his instant credibility to just a few movies over the years -- Coal Miner's Daughter, The Right Stuff and Feeling Minnesota, among them. Filmmakers seek out his distinct Southerness.

"They sure aren't hiring me for my looks, 'cuz I ain't gettin' any prettier," Helm says with a laugh from his home in Woodstock, N.Y.

He's 68, now. The voice is a post-throat-cancer rasp, a cancer that almost silenced the man who is most famous as a singing drummer with the legendary rock group, The Band, in the 1960s and '70s. But he's singing and acting again, which is good news for music and film fans.

"I don't know what it is about the Old South, and conspiracy buffs, but something about the accent works for the character," Helm says of Mr. Rate in Shooter. He says that as the country has lost its regional accents, performers such as himself grow rarer and rarer.

"It used to be that the accent made it into the music, with Detroit and Memphis and Philadelphia, even, having their own sounds," he says. "It made the country richer, I think."

By Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel

Levon Helm as Mr. Rate in Shooter

"World ain't what it seems is it, Gunny? You keep that in mind. The moment you think you got it figured, you're wrong."