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All Movie Info
Starring:
Clive Owen, Monica Bellucci, Paul Giamatti, Greg Bryk, Stephen McHattie, Ramona Pringle, Jane McLean, Chris Jericho, Andy Mackenzie, Mike Dopud, Laura DeCarteret, Jeffrey Parazzo, Michael Edward Rose, Stephen R. Hart, Harry Karp, Layton Morrison, Paul Mota, David Ury, Talia Russo, Suresh John, Jason Reso, Mike Rad, Sidney Mende-Gibson, Suresh John, Lucas Mende-Gibson, John Koniditsiotis, Dru Viergever
Directed By:
Michael Davis
Written By:
Michael Davis
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Shoot 'Em Up (2007)
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Movie Review by Ezra
October 5th, 2007
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Shoot 'Em Up is one of a new, post-modern breed of action thrillers like Kill Bill, Frank Miller's Sin City, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and last year's Crank. These films are characterized by a gritty, tough-as-nails anti-hero, in this case, a mysterious gunman known only as Smith (Clive Owen); highly stylized, over-the-top action scenes and visual gags; and a certain tongue-in-cheek sense of humor about their genre's clichés and conventions.
Shoot 'Em Up wastes no time in getting down n' dirty. The film opens with an extreme close-up of Smith biting into a carrot, a vegetable that he will later use several times as an instrument of death; this quickly establishes his character: Bugs Bunny with a gun ... lots of guns. This is really all the introduction he needs before we cut to the chase, and within a minute, Smith is mowing down bad guys while simultaneously delivering a baby. When the mother dies in the gunfight, Smith reluctantly takes the baby with him, just in time to save it from the head Bad Guy, Hertz (Paul Giamatti); he takes the baby to his old friend, a lactating prostitute named Donna (Monica Bellucci), who is also reluctant but ultimately goes along for the ride.
Ultimately, story and character development are relatively unimportant, and often seem to be included for no other reason than to give the audience some time to breathe before the next credibility-defying action sequence – and make no mistake, this film has some of the coolest action sequences ever made. All the characters are what they are from the beginning to the end: Smith is the quintessential tough, a dude so grimy his housekey is a rat (seriously); Hertz is pure disgusting evil, a pseudo-intellectual pseudo-tough guy not above copping a feel off a dead woman; Donna is the standard hooker with a heart of gold.
What matters here is style, and this film has that in abundance. A good example is an already buzzed about scene in which Smith and Donna are interrupted by gunmen mid-coitus, and Smith proceeds to obey the film's title while simultaneously bringing Donna to apparent climax. The statement about sex and violence in the cinema may seem a little obvious, but this film never displays any pretensions of subtlety, or any other pretensions for that matter.
While it suffers from the same silly convolutions of story that hurt the inferior Smokin' Aces even more, and the self-aware dialogue occasionally crosses over into lame self-consciousness (an example of Smith's dry, cool action hero wit: "f*ck you, you f*ckin' f*ckers"), Shoot 'Em Up invites you to surrender your disbelief and enjoy the ride, which is endlessly inventive and consummately enjoyable.
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