Shoot-Em-Up Review
by Jerry Saravia (Faust668 AT msn DOT com)August 25th, 2008
SHOOT EM UP (2007)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
RATING: Three stars
I've seen countless action movies and countless action movie parodies/ send-ups and they all inevitably cancel each other out. How many different ways can there be to show bullets being fired from a gun? Exploding vehicles? Car crashes? Not many, and yet something like "Shoot 'Em Up" arrives and makes it seem all new again by infusing a cartoonish mentality.
Right at the start of the movie, Clive Owen is sitting on a bench and eating a carrot in what is perhaps the only quiet scene in the entire movie. Before long a man is hellbent on murdering a pregnant woman, and they both run past Owen. Feeling a sense of duty, Owen chases the guy, impales him with a carrot ("Eat your vegetables"), almost saves the pregnant woman, shoots her umbilical cord since she has just given birth, and evades certain death by using oil slick to slide away and shoot everyone in sight. Now Owen is stuck with a baby! He runs around town evading more bad guys, pumping them full of lead, and keeps running. Eventually he secures help from a prostitute, DQ, played by Monica Belluci who plays her cliched character with far more elegance and flair than perhaps required.
Mr. Hertz (Paul Giamatti) is the head villain, insistent on capturing Owen and trying to stay one step ahead. The minimal plot has to do with a Democratic presidential candidate who hires Mr. Hertz to find the baby since the candidate is dying of cancer and needs the bone marrow from the infant! I don't want to give away the twist since the idea is sure to drive most conservatives up the wall, screaming in hysterics! All pregnant women better watch out for Mr. Hertz and his minions!
"Shoot 'Em Up" is a delirious, wildly overactive action movie spoof - the only known category this movie could be placed in since it can't be taken seriously. It is more appropriately a live-action cartoon, which seems to borrow from John Woo, Tarantino and the Coen Bros. and mixes it all up in a blender, with an extra dose of caffeine. Interestingly, "Shoot 'Em Up" doesn't feature mindless action - it is action with wit, purpose and clever imagination. I love the parachute sequence where gravity has some limits and the hero flies around like Superman (albeit with more pizazz than Brandon Routh). The gun battles are ferocious and in-your-face but not mind-numbing as say "Last Man Standing," an unwatchable Bruce Willis western remake of "A Fistful of Dollars" that featured more gun battles than an average Clint Eastwood western. Whereas "Last Man Standing" and possibly any number of trashy cop flicks/neo-noir thrillers from the last two decades like "Last Boy Scout" focused on sickeningly and repulsively violent carnage and a high body count, "Shoot 'Em Up" has flair and a definite sense of style at work, upping the ante on the absurd and the ridiculous. Consider the scene where Owen leaves a baby on a carousel. The hit men arrive and Owen sees them, so he shoots the carousel so it can spin around and, well, you get the idea! And how many movies show a woman with a baby hiding out inside a tank in a museum? How many show inconceivable booby-traps developed by the sullen hero in the matter of seconds before the enemies arrive? Or how many more would dare show Owen making love to Belluci while shooting the enemies that lurk around the corner?
Though occasionally repetitive and wearying, "Shoot 'Em Up" is entertaining and chock full of blood-splattered ultraviolence yet always delivered with a wink. It is cartoonish to the extreme and more over-the-top than a Starbucks mocha latte with whipped cream. Come to think of it, the movie is like drinking a latte - you'll drink it, feel energetic, then mercilessly drained and then, just maybe, you may want to repeat the experience.
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