Shoot 'Em Up May Be Silly, But it Sure is Fun

by Brett Parker

Shoot ‘Em Up is exactly what the title promises it to be. Most action movies are accused of favoring style over substance. Here’s one that throws substance completely in the fire and runs amok with its style. The film is wall-to-wall action sequences that go so over the top, it breaks the Earth’s atmosphere. The film is completely absurd, but at no point is it unaware of this. If you’re willing to be a good sport and have an open, action-junkie mind, then you’ll be delighted with this self-reflexive fun.

Clive Owen stars as Mr. Smith, who appears to be -- for all intents and purposes -- a carrot-eating drifter. One night while sitting at a bus stop, he watches a helpless pregnant woman try to outrun a bad guy with a gun. Mr. Smith decides to help the poor woman and follows them into the warehouse, where he disposes of the bad guy and delivers the baby. The fact that Mr. Smith kills the bad guy with a carrot and shoots off the baby’s umbilical cord with a gun pretty much announces that this movie is not to be taken seriously. That point is only confirmed when countless bad guys show up to find the baby and Mr. Smith opens fire on them with the skills of a John Woo protagonist. The bad guys are led by a criminal mastermind named Hertz (Pail Giamatti) who wants the newborn baby dead, for reasons later revealed (and revealed to be Bonkers!). Ever the moralist, Mr. Smith escapes with the baby and spends the rest of the film trying to protect it with the help of his hooker friend, Donna (Monica Bellucci). Yet Hertz is hot on their trail with a whole lot of guns and a whole lot of fury. This leads to a series of laughable adventures that involve bone marrow, politicians, breast milk, punk rock, and death by carrots.

This is one of those action movies that has to be seen to be believed. This is not because of big-production technical skills, but because the plot and the action are so preposterous that it is downright laughable. I mean that as a compliment. Like Hot Fuzz, the film is an hilarious celebration of mindless action grandeur. It’s clearly a parody, only a couple of degrees away from being a Naked Gun movie. A lot of action movies have an absurdity to them yet they masquerade as serious pictures. Shoot ‘Em Up announces itself as preposterous from jump-street and disregards any sense of seriousness you’d expect it to have. This frees itself to have loads of fun with the material and you will too. Through the course of the action, we see a man flying through one car windshield into another to open fire on its passengers, a man using his broken hand as a gun (literally), a shoot-out on a children’s playground, and a shoot-out that takes place during a freefall from an airplane thousands of feet in the air (take that Point Break and Eraser). Of course some viewers may be turned off by this insane suspension of disbelief, but action sequences, like most movie scenes, work well as long as they’re well done and absorbing enough.

The main cast also helps with the film’s fun. The film displays highly likeable stars playing fun riffs on their personas. Clive Owen, who is arguably the coolest man alive, uses his trademark edge and wit to perfection as Smith, who is not only a wizard with a gun but spits one-liners that would make James Bond red in the face. Paul Giamatti rediscovers some of that old Pig Vomit intensity to make for a fun villain while Monica Bellucci goes beyond just looking pretty and finds the right balance between funny and sympathetic. It’s great fun watching these top-notch actors revel in action clichés. It would’ve been less interesting if low level B-Actors were cast instead.

Shoot ‘Em Up is a movie made all in good fun and it is very difficult not to feel that same fun watching it. It may be lightweight and disposable, but those are the exact qualities that are used to its advantage. There are stories of how director Michael Davis cheerfully pitched the film to studios by exploiting the goofiness of the action scenes and how Clive Owen found the script’s energy so hilarious he couldn’t say no. Indeed, its movies like this that remind us why we love action movies in the first place. Seriousness can be the destroyer of fun. Sometimes the less serious an action picture is, the more enjoyable it is. That’s probably why I enjoyed Casino Royale more than The Bourne Ultimatum. All-in-all, this film is worth the casual screening.