...essentially just one long chase sequence that becomes much too monotonous much too soon.
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If you can't tell from the title what this film is about, you're in trouble.
Yes, 2007's "Shoot 'Em Up" is an action comedy; or, more precisely, a parody of an action thriller, since the laughs are rather incidental. And having a good, handsome, rugged action hero like Clive Owen to play the lead is helpful, too.
The problem is that other filmmakers have already done this kind of parody before and done it better. That doesn't necessarily make "Shoot 'Em Up" a bad movie, just a tired one. I mean, Clive Owen was already in Robert Rodriguez's "Sin City" playing the same sort of laconic, film-noir character he plays here, and "Sin City" was a better movie. Therefore, "Shoot 'Em Up" seems like a retread, with Owen and the nonstop violence its only redeeming factors. Still, I'm sure for many viewers that will be enough. For me, it was not.
Filmmaker Michael Davis ("100 Girls," "Monster Man") wrote and directed "Shoot 'Em Up," apparently having seen too many "Pulp Fiction" clones and figuring he could top them. The only "top" we get is as in "over-the-top," because surely a little shooting and chasing goes a long way. When it's extended to an hour and a half, it becomes overkill, if you'll pardon the expression.
Even the New Line logo at the movie's start-up gets shot to bits, a portent of things to come and a tongue-in-cheek suggestion not to take any of what follows seriously. Then we see Clive Owen as Mr. Smith, tough guy supreme, sitting at a bus stop crunching a carrot with authority, and we know he means business. I suspect Davis intended the carrot to remind us of Bugs Bunny and the cartoon violence of the old Looney Tunes shorts, the kind of comic tone projected by this picture.
A pregnant woman suddenly runs by, pursued by a hoodlum with a gun. Reluctantly, our hero goes to the rescue and uses the carrot to advantage. But the hood isn't alone. A half dozen armed thugs immediately show up, and a gun battle ensues. So the movie begins with bullets flying and loud, raucous music blaring, and it hardly lets up for the rest of the story.
Now, I admit the opening gun battle is stylistic and clever, not terribly exciting but fun to watch. If only the film had slowed down for a breather, it might have even pulled me in. But, no. The movie's kinetic energy never lets up, the cameras swirling and jumping around endlessly. Smith helps the pregnant woman deliver her baby amid a barrage of gunfire, with blood spurting in all directions.
The woman dies, leaving Smith holding the sack, er, baby. What to do? He winds up trying to protect the newborn kid from a small army of baddies headed by a Mr. Hertz, played against type by Paul Giamatti. Like all good villains, Giamatti's bad guy is hard to keep down. Why Hertz wants to kill the child is beside the point. Nothing in the film makes any sense, so don't even try to figure it out. Writer/director Davis means everything as satiric entertainment, a serious spoof of other action movies. But what's a serious spoof when most action movies are themselves silly and exaggerated?
The only other character of interest is the required romantic interest. In a true film noir, she would be a femme fatale, but here she is more straightforward than that. There is little subtlety in "Shoot 'Em Up." Anyway, she's Donna Quintana (Monica Bellucci), a prostitute with the proverbial heart of gold, whom Smith enlists to help him with the baby. Together, Smith and his friend run, shoot, and scoot hither and yon, first to avoid Hertz and his henchmen and then to go to the heart of the matter and discover why Hertz is so intent on killing this child.
While the movie is mainly about action, it admits some humorous lines along the way, sort of in the manner of a typical Bond flick. For instance, Mr. Hertz, the ruthless assassin, is forever on the cell phone with his wife and at one point turns to a goon and asks, "You know why a gun is better than a wife? You can put a silencer on a gun." Needless to say, Smith has his own share of zingers as well. He describes himself as "a British nanny, and I'm dangerous." And his door key is a mouse. A live mouse. Don't ask. His nemesis describes him as "a man with no name riding into town on a pale horse dispensing his own brand of justice." I guess Smith is really Clint Eastwood in disguise.
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[release]22353[/release]