2007 / 86 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale J. Nauertz

As soon as I heard there was a movie coming out called “Shoot ‘Em Up”, I was intrigued. When I learned that it starred Clive Owen, the modern king of bad-assery after “Sin City”, I became more excited. When I discovered that Clive was going up against a villain played by Paul Giamatti, an actor who is never ever boring, my excitement grew. When I saw the trailer, full of car chases, explosions and plenty of bullets flying around, I put it on my must-see list. Then I promptly forgot all about its existence…until I saw an ad for it and learned that it would be released this past weekend. (A violent, fun-filled action movie AND a western released on the same weekend…the movie gods have officially smiled down on me.) I was unable to see it this weekend (you try dragging your fiancee to a film entitled “Shoot ‘Em Up”) but I DID get in there as soon as I was able.

And I gotta say, I do not regret doing so.

Plot? Clive Owen plays a man who eats carrots and shoots people. There, that’s really all you need to know. If you really insist on getting a little more description, well, fine: he’s sitting on a bench minding his own business when he sees a frantic pregnant woman being pursued by an aggressive prick wielding a gun. He rolls his eyes and does something about it. One kick-ass action sequence later, Clive is being pursued by an army of well-armed mercenaries while toting a newly orphaned baby around town in search of a lactating prostitute.

From there, things just get wilder, more violent, and progressively nuttier.

I’m not going to lie to you. I respect you all too much for that. The plot could be charitably described as threadbare and, as slight as it is, I’m still not entirely sure that it all adds up. The acting isn’t going to win any awards. The one-liners are cheesy as all hell and some of the situations are borderline absurd.

Having said that, this is the best time I’ve had at the movies since “Hot Fuzz”. Clive Owen is like a British Clint Eastwood or, as Ben agreed, Jones with an itchy trigger finger. He’s almost constantly pissed off, and not just because people keep shooting at him. He kills more people than anyone but a NASA mathematician could possibly count. He kills more than one person with a carrot. He attempts to purchase bullets with food stamps. Needless to say, he’s all kinds of awesome. Clive not only warrants a man crush from every heterosexual man in the audience, he also provides an element of tragedy while barely pausing to reload. He even saves a piece of gun control legislation by shooting someone in the head. Monica Bellucci brings sexiness and sadness to the standard role of “whore with a heart of gold”. She’ll warm your loins with her wardrobe and sex scenes and break your heart with the modicum of character development she is given. Giamatti is a great villain. Owen is such a bad-ass that it would take a large dose of charisma and evil charm to provide a suitable foil for him, but Paul Giamatti does so effortlessly. He’s the sort of villain you love to hate, but he’s also the sort that you want to know more about before you see him take a bullet to the head. All these actors understand the material they’re playing with and find just the right tone. They also seem, like me, to be having an utter ball.

The movie has a relentless pace, it’s fairly well edited, it’s directed with a fairly sure hand, and it even presents each of its amazing action sequences in such a way that you can tell what the hell is actually going on. This is an underrated quality in modern film. The shootouts (which, as the title should tell you, are plentiful) are filled with moments of giddy spectacle that gleefully thumb their nose at the laws of physics. They are also scored with precisely the right hard rock song at precisely the right time (note the use of Nirvana’s “Breed” during the opening sequence). The blood flows like water and the lines are just the right sort of cheese.

CGI robots and superheroes are all well and good, but I’ve missed good old-fashioned gunfights and explosions. I’ve missed one-liners and heroes that are larger than life and damn near bulletproof. I’ve missed nudity and bloodshed and all the things that an R-rated movie should be about. So thank God for movies like this and “Crank”, movies like the ones I watched relentlessly during my teenage years. How good is “Shoot ‘Em Up”? It’s the kind of movie that makes you want to drive fast and listen to heavy metal music. It’s the kind of movie that gets your adrenaline pumping and makes you thank God you were born a man and, therefore, able to truly appreciate shit like this. This movie is a pure shot of cool straight to the head. It never lets up, it never slows down, and it bares only the slightest resemblance to our reality.

Fucking see it already!!!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 11th, 2007 at 5:35 pm and is filed under Dale's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.