Dude, guns are awesome. Seriously, they’re flickin’ sweet. So can you make an entire movie comprised of almost nothing but people shooting guns at each other? You can, and it’s called Shoot ‘Em Up. But can you make a really good movie comprised of almost nothing but people shooting guns at each other? I guess you’ll just have to read the review to find out. . .
Shoot ‘Em Up
3 Stars
It’s a good time to be a guy at the movies. With the unexpected success of movies like 300 and Transformers, movies with excessive amounts of violence, style and entirely unneeded female nudity are going to start to flood the marketplace. Shoot ‘Em Up is easily lumped in with these ultra-macho flicks, but is it too busy being a man’s movie to work on the whole?
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Clive Owen plays Smith, an other-wise average guy that happens to be able to be so good with guns, that they’re practically an extension of his arms. He’s minding his own beeswax one night at a bus stop, enjoying a carrot; when out of nowhere a pregnant damsel runs by, distressed by the dozens of hit men out for the life of her and her womb’s. Realizing he should probably do the right thing, Smith is dragged into trying to save the woman, failing and being stuck with the task of keeping her freshly delivered bundle of joy out harm’s way. Eventually Monica Bellalucci joins in on the fun, and we have a happy family of a gun-slinger, a prostitute and an orphan. To be sure, it’s a picture for the whole family.
While Owen is perfectly reserved and angry as the easily annoyed hard-ass who doesn’t give a fuck; this show belongs to Paul Giamatti as the smug family man whose business trips consist of offing people that the highest bidder wants offed. Giamatti is disgusting here, snobbily muttering off his dialogue under his breath out of his round and stubbled face. We all knew that the guy can play a serious role like few others can, but now we see that the Sideways star can do exploitation as well as fine drama. The guy can shout “Fuck you, you fucking fucker!” like it’s no one’s business.
But as great as the performances are, the film’s entire purpose for being is the violence. The stuff is so histrionic and unbelievable, it’s probably closer in line with Looney Toons than most action vehicles Hollywood throws our way, with gun-fights erupting on playgrounds and a few thousand feet in the air. Realism isn’t this movie’s thing, but entertainment is – the set-ups for these segments are riotously far-fetched, so unbelievable that only a five-year-old who still believes in the monster under his bed could think of the story as plausible.
But as insane as all of these scenes are, none of them reach their potential. You laugh when you’re in the theater, but the stakes are non-existent and the action is too difficult to follow for this film to be memorable. I saw this movie less than 24 hours before writing this review, and I’m already having a hard time recalling what exactly happened. What with a murky political conspiracy that is hard to grasp and not a second’s rest to take everything in and realize how ridiculous it is, the movie spirals downward at the end to a point where the fact that Owen just used his own hand as a gun isn’t as interesting as it ought to be.
It might not be the movie that I had hoped it would be; but at a short and sweet 93 minutes, Shoot ‘Em Up a good enough time to spend a few bucks on.