REVIEW - "Shoot'Em Up" (2007)

This weekend surprised me. “3:10 to Yuma” looked incredible with its charming cast and substance filled look; meanwhile, “Shoot’Em Up” looked stupid, but fun. In a generation where Tarantino fans are finally becoming filmmakers, stupid and fun have a better chance against smart and intricate. This time, the lack of substance wins over and “Shoot’Em Up” lives up to its title as a trash action flick with more charm than most westerns. (Wink. Wink.)

Clive Owen plays Mr. Smith; a carrot munching badass who seems to have a problem with every little OCD nitpick you can think of. After rescuing a pregnant woman and delivering her baby (while in a gunfight) he decides to save the child and protect the newborn until he can find out why there's a group so intent on killing him. (Or her? Doesn’t matter.) Anyway, Smith goes to his prostitute friend Donna (Monica Bellucci) to take care of the baby while he goes through gunfight, after gunfight, after gunfight, after gunfight…. I don’t have enough gigabytes to keep typing, but Smith tries to find out why the baby is important.

Now, as you may have guessed, I could care less about the plot of the movie. The movie itself, doesn’t care about its own plot. The biggest flaw with this film is, amusingly enough, when it tries to develop its characters—And that only leads to an extraordinarily ridiculous scene of Clive Owen in a gunfight while engaging in intercourse. That’s right everyone. He has sex while shooting at people. If there is now a dream every man desires to pursue, it is that.

On a more serious note, the cast has a ball playing such over-the-top characters. Clive Owen puts on his best “Sin City” face to play the cynical Smith. Bellucci is the most attractive she’s ever been and plays a truly heartfelt character, but the real show stealer has to be the incredible Paul Giamatti as Hertz. If anyone should get the most fun, over-the-top villain award for 2007, it’s Paul Giamatti. Every line he utters is some gratuitous madness that will keep the audience chuckling. His phone conversations with his wife are hysterical and his antics keep the film fun.

The satire of the film isn’t too subtle, but it says a lot about the American people. As fun as the movie is, it’s essentially “gun porn.” Gun fighting, more gun fighting and another touch of gun fighting! Sometimes a gun isn’t even involved—Just the bullets. In the movie a leader of a gun organization claims that people don’t like guns because they can cock them, slide the lock back and slip magazines in, but because it makes people feel powerful. While he ‘s saying all of this, Smith is pulling out a large number of guns and doing all those things he said people “don’t” like guns for. When in reality, we as audience just like the sound of the slide locking, the coolness of slipping a magazine in an automatic and watching how badass a guy looks while cocking a shotgun. It’s really funny considering the movie is basically making fun of itself for being gun porn. Is there no shame in how violent the American people are?

Okay, so obviously “Shoot’Em Up” won’t win any awards and it’s not for everyone. It’s destine to be a cult flick and I can see the DVD sales for this movie skyrocketing already. It’s just a fun, dirty action flick that isn’t afraid of looking trashy and letting the action completely take over. The character development sucks and some of the effects are not very good. But the acting is great, the lines are fun and there are scenes in this movie that will be forever copied by future filmmakers. Everything that you can possibly do with a gunfight happens in this movie. What more can you expect from a movie with the title, “Shoot’Em Up”?

*** out of ****