Just weeks ago, I reviewed the mediocre
War, which features two action film legends (Jason Statham and Jet Li), but failed to truly utilize them. Now here I am reviewing
Shoot 'Em Up, an over the top action-comedy starring Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti - two names not exactly connected with the genre. And yet, one single minute in this movie with these two actors contains more bad-ass fun than just about the entire running time of
War. Surprised? Pleasantly so.
Shoot 'Em Up won't go down in history as a cinematic masterpiece, but it will be the one I reminisce about if I should ever think back on the first time I saw a movie that featured a man getting stabbed through the head with a carrot, and a baby being delivered from a pregnant woman in the middle of a shoot out in the opening five minutes. That's gotta count for something.
Mr. Smith (Clive Owen) is a carrot-chomping, sharp shooting loner waiting for a bus when he happens to see a pregnant woman on the run from some hired goons. Perhaps against his better judgement, he gets involved, shoots down most of the pursuers, and helps deliver the woman's baby when she goes into labor in the middle of the gun battle. The woman does not survive the fight, but Smith is able to escape with the baby, thinking that it must be important. Now he's being targeted by the same men that were after the woman, who are led by a professional hitman named Hertz (Paul Giamatti) - a man who finds it hard to keep his career and personal life separate because his wife keeps on calling him on his cell phone when he's trying to kill someone. Smith teams up with a local prostitute named Donna (Monica Bellucci) as he attempts to uncover why these killers want this baby dead, and the story behind the death of its mother.
I could go into a lengthy description of what makes this movie work so well, but it really all boils down to one thing. This movie is so energetic and fun, rarely ever slowing down to the point that the film's 90 minute running time seems to fly by in 40, that it's really quite pointless to attempt analyzing it. I was glued to the action, I was laughing at the film's sharp humor, I was in awe of some of the set pieces, such as when Smith blows away possible assailants while making love with Donna. This is not the kind of movie you go into, and decide what worked and what didn't. You either get wrapped up in the silliness of the film and let it take you, or you don't. I was under the spell of this film almost from the start. Writer-director Michael Davis has conceived what could be considered the near-perfect action film. He's trimmed off all the fat and unnecessary exposition, and narrowed it down to the bare essentials. What Davis has also done is given us an extremely violent live action
Looney Tunes picture. Kind of like what would happen if they gave Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck automatic weapons, and let them go at each other for an hour and a half. Maybe it was Smith's passion for carrots, and Hertz's smart mouth that made me think of the characters. Intentional or not, I was smiling the entire time.
Performances really aren't supposed to matter in movies like this, but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy them. Clive Owen gives Smith a seemingly endless supply of quiet cool, and an icy stare that pretty much lets you know you're dead if you say more than two words to you. (And that's if he likes you.) Paul Giamatti seems to be having a ball and leaves no piece of the set unchewed as he goes full tilt into his cartoonishly evil role. He sells it completely, and we love him for it. He also brings a hilariously perverse sympathy to his character, in that he's a family man as well as a sociopath, and tries to decide which of two birthday cards to give to his 8-year-old kid while in the middle of staging a hit on someone's life. That's the kind of movie it is. It doesn't take itself completely seriously for a second, and simply wants to show us some very creative and well-staged action sequences, as well as over a hundred different ways to kill a person. Living up to its title,
Shoot 'Em Up has one of the biggest body counts in any movie I've seen this year, but the violence is imaginative and witty, so that it never becomes offensive or overbearing. Those who worry that the filmmakers have blown their load in the first five minutes by showing a man being stabbed through the head with a carrot, worry not. There's much more where that came from, plus more inventive use of vegetables.
As much as I enjoyed
Shoot 'Em Up, it puts me in a difficult position. In the past, I have criticized movies for resembling non-stop mindless action video games, never slowing down enough to give us time to catch our breaths or get to know the characters. This movie does just that, and yet, I loved it for it. Maybe it's because I knew what I was getting into with the self-explanatory title, it didn't bother me so much. But it's more than that. The sequences are incredibly well-done (a gunfight that occurs in mid-air after the characters have dived out of plane is a highlight), and the movie's sense of humor is rich and most importantly, actually funny. I've always said that any kind of movie can work as long as the people behind the film care about it. Even the most cliched or conventional formula film can win me over with the right approach. All I can say is that this movie struck me in a way that past similar films just couldn't. You get the sense that when Davis was writing the script, he had a huge grin on his face the entire time he was sitting in front of the computer. That fun carries through to the audience almost as soon as the studio logo fades away. This is the movie the others I have criticized wished they could be.
Were it not for the fact that this film is being released after Labor Day, I would call
Shoot 'Em Up the most fun I had watching an action film of the Summer season. Not even
Live Free or Die Hard (a film I admired) put me in this good of a mood. Everyone who walks into this movie knows what they're getting from the title alone, and they won't be disappointed. Yet, they're also going to be getting a devilishly fun and smart movie also. Yeah, I said smart. It may not look like it, but it takes a certain kind of intelligence and wit to make a movie like this work this well.
Shoot 'Em Up is a very smart movie disguised as a very stupid one.
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Just weeks ago, I reviewed the mediocre War, which features two action film legends (Jason Statham and Jet Li), but failed to truly utilize them. Now here I am reviewing Shoot 'Em Up, an over the top action-comedy starring Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti - two names not exactly connected with the genre. And yet, one single minute in this movie with these two actors contains more bad-ass fun than just about the entire running time of War. Surprised? Pleasantly so. Shoot 'Em Up won't go down in history as a cinematic masterpiece, but it will be the one I reminisce about if I should ever think back on the first time I saw a movie that featured a man getting stabbed through the head with a carrot, and a baby being delivered from a pregnant woman in the middle of a shoot out in the opening five minutes. That's gotta count for something.
Mr. Smith (Clive Owen) is a carrot-chomping, sharp shooting loner waiting for a bus when he happens to see a pregnant woman on the run from some hired goons. Perhaps against his better judgement, he gets involved, shoots down most of the pursuers, and helps deliver the woman's baby when she goes into labor in the middle of the gun battle. The woman does not survive the fight, but Smith is able to escape with the baby, thinking that it must be important. Now he's being targeted by the same men that were after the woman, who are led by a professional hitman named Hertz (Paul Giamatti) - a man who finds it hard to keep his career and personal life separate because his wife keeps on calling him on his cell phone when he's trying to kill someone. Smith teams up with a local prostitute named Donna (Monica Bellucci) as he attempts to uncover why these killers want this baby dead, and the story behind the death of its mother.
I could go into a lengthy description of what makes this movie work so well, but it really all boils down to one thing. This movie is so energetic and fun, rarely ever slowing down to the point that the film's 90 minute running time seems to fly by in 40, that it's really quite pointless to attempt analyzing it. I was glued to the action, I was laughing at the film's sharp humor, I was in awe of some of the set pieces, such as when Smith blows away possible assailants while making love with Donna. This is not the kind of movie you go into, and decide what worked and what didn't. You either get wrapped up in the silliness of the film and let it take you, or you don't. I was under the spell of this film almost from the start. Writer-director Michael Davis has conceived what could be considered the near-perfect action film. He's trimmed off all the fat and unnecessary exposition, and narrowed it down to the bare essentials. What Davis has also done is given us an extremely violent live action Looney Tunes picture. Kind of like what would happen if they gave Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck automatic weapons, and let them go at each other for an hour and a half. Maybe it was Smith's passion for carrots, and Hertz's smart mouth that made me think of the characters. Intentional or not, I was smiling the entire time.
Performances really aren't supposed to matter in movies like this, but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy them. Clive Owen gives Smith a seemingly endless supply of quiet cool, and an icy stare that pretty much lets you know you're dead if you say more than two words to you. (And that's if he likes you.) Paul Giamatti seems to be having a ball and leaves no piece of the set unchewed as he goes full tilt into his cartoonishly evil role. He sells it completely, and we love him for it. He also brings a hilariously perverse sympathy to his character, in that he's a family man as well as a sociopath, and tries to decide which of two birthday cards to give to his 8-year-old kid while in the middle of staging a hit on someone's life. That's the kind of movie it is. It doesn't take itself completely seriously for a second, and simply wants to show us some very creative and well-staged action sequences, as well as over a hundred different ways to kill a person. Living up to its title, Shoot 'Em Up has one of the biggest body counts in any movie I've seen this year, but the violence is imaginative and witty, so that it never becomes offensive or overbearing. Those who worry that the filmmakers have blown their load in the first five minutes by showing a man being stabbed through the head with a carrot, worry not. There's much more where that came from, plus more inventive use of vegetables.
As much as I enjoyed Shoot 'Em Up, it puts me in a difficult position. In the past, I have criticized movies for resembling non-stop mindless action video games, never slowing down enough to give us time to catch our breaths or get to know the characters. This movie does just that, and yet, I loved it for it. Maybe it's because I knew what I was getting into with the self-explanatory title, it didn't bother me so much. But it's more than that. The sequences are incredibly well-done (a gunfight that occurs in mid-air after the characters have dived out of plane is a highlight), and the movie's sense of humor is rich and most importantly, actually funny. I've always said that any kind of movie can work as long as the people behind the film care about it. Even the most cliched or conventional formula film can win me over with the right approach. All I can say is that this movie struck me in a way that past similar films just couldn't. You get the sense that when Davis was writing the script, he had a huge grin on his face the entire time he was sitting in front of the computer. That fun carries through to the audience almost as soon as the studio logo fades away. This is the movie the others I have criticized wished they could be.
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