Shoot 'Em Up

Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti, and Monica Belluci star in "Shoot 'Em Up," a 2007 film that I believe is a parody of the action genre. It has to be.

Owen plays a former black ops who helps a woman deliver a baby and then finds himself on the run with the baby as hundreds of people chase him and shoot at him.

I won't go into the whys and wherefores. I will only say that it is non-stop action, with Owen shooting in all kinds of situations - sliding on oil leaks under cars, having sex, sitting, standing, running, jumping, parachuting out of a plane -- he never stops. When he's not shooting he's punching, knifing, or slamming someone's head somewhere. Or eating a carrot.

Monica Belluci is the hooker he asks to help care for the baby as the two of them run for their lives, the baby in tow wearing a bullet-proof vest.

The body count is unbelievable.

Exciting, fun, bloody, violent, and preposterous, you'll be on the edge of your seat rooting for him to make the world safe.

Someone once told me that movies are made for 15-year-old boys in Taiwan. This kind of action film definitely is. You can sit back and watch car chases, thermal guns, nudity, you name it - you don't need to know a word of English.

Clive Owen comes up against Paul Giamatti, and the two actors couldn't be more different. Owen is deadpan and deadly, Giamatti is a showman who can play an evil character like this or comedy with equal facility. I understand he recently played, of all things, Hamlet, and received wonderful reviews.

I really hope Clive Owen plays James Bond. I think he'd be wonderful.

As I stated above, this movie is a fun ride. The script was probably written by a 13 year old kid who plays a lot of video games, but that's why it's great. You can just kick back, turn your brain off for 80 minutes, and enjoy. It is the ultimate guy movie. And for the one liners: as cheesy and lame as you could ask for. Shoot Em Up was made to entertain the 20 something action junkie, so if you aren't one, you will no doubt hate this flick. But for the rest of us, who all have that 13 year old immature video gamer still inside, you gotta see it. I think Clive Owen might be the first true action star Hollywood has had in a long time. One other enjoyable feature: great soundtrack. Shootout scene with Motorhead's "Ace of Spades" in the background: you can't ask for anything better. I give Shoot Em Up 8 out of 10.

A film that aims to be a parody on the extremeness and over-the-top tendencies of the action genre, and succeeds in becoming entertaining and exhilarating. I doubt there will be a more entertaining piece of work this year. It was so over-the-top and hilarious. Some of it did go a tid bit too far for me (the firefight while jumping out of a plane, the fact that there wasn't a single cop to be found) but all of the wild absurdity combined with an encompassing metal soundtrack and perfectly choreographed action made it one of the funnest movies I've ever seen. The clash of Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti certainly added a great stride to it, with Clive's deadpan hilarity and Giamatti's winning charisma. It's this extravagance and extreme unrealism that makes the film entertaining, but can also be a flaw from time to time. But it is absolutely impossible not to have an uproarious time watching Clive Owen shoot an umbilical cord to separate it from the mother, kill numerous people with a simple carrot, and (in my favorite scene of the film) have raunchy sex with Monica Bellucci whilst laying out an endless supply of armed hit men. Certainly something I could see myself re-watching time and time again.

I'm lobbying for a new film genre to sit alongside the existing ones such as drama, science-fiction, horror and comedy. The new category I'm proposing would be 'Snakes on a Plane.' Besides the obvious Samuel L Jackson film, this genre should be populated with films that tell you everything you need to know about them from the title, thus giving you everything you need to know about whether or not you will enjoy them without sitting down to watch. 'Shoot 'em Up' falls into the 'Snakes on a Plane' category perfectly.

The film 'Shoot 'em Up' is about shooting and killing things. With guns. And carrots (you'll have to watch the film to see whether I'm being serious about the 'carrots' comment). A man, Clive Owen eating a carrot incidentally, witnesses some thugs hunting down a clearly distressed pregnant woman. He just so happens to be possibly the most highly-trained man with a gun in the world - and the perfect person to protect an infant in danger. From then on he takes on every dispensable thug and paid lackey in the entire city, much to the dismay of head bad-guy, Hertz (Paul Giamatti).

Besides the obvious clue in the title as to what the film is about, the only other thing you really need to know is that it NEVER takes itself seriously. 'Shoot 'em Up' knows that it's ludicrously daft and brilliantly over-the-top and it just gets better and better. The action/shooting scenes are clearly the high-points and each one attempts to outdo the last, creating battles in places you probably never thought you'd see and ways of using a gun/bullets that will delight anyone with an appreciation for overblown action scenes.

There's a loose plot, but I won't go into it. It's totally secondary to the gunfights. However, the film is more than just action - largely thanks to its two main stars. There's more than a few references to 'Looney Tunes' and Paul Giamatti stands in for the long-suffering Elmer Fudd as he attempts to track down his Bugs Bunny, the mysteriously-titles 'Mr Smith' (Clive Owen). The two play off each other perfectly and you won't just laugh at how over-the-top the gun scenes are, but also with their constant banter. There are few bad guys you'll love as much as Paul Giamatti!

If you like your films serious and realistic then steer well clear. However, if you like tongue-in-cheek and want something to lose yourself in while you leave your brain at the door, then you'll have everything you want here. If you've also seen either of Jason Statham's 'Crank' films then you'll know roughly the sort of film you're getting here.

Given the choice, I prefer my action films to be as brutally realistic as possible, but if film-makers are insistent about going down the cartoonish violence route, they might as well go the whole nine yards, as in Shoot 'Em Up, a relentlessly OTT slam-bang actioner that starts out all guns blazing and doesn't call it quits until writer/director Michael Davis has thrown every possible crazy idea he can come up with onto the screen.

This wild, anything goes approach could be compared to the previous year's Crank, but unlike that film, which was crippled by unlikeable characters, unnecessary vulgarity and a glut of irritatingly showy editing tricks, Shoot 'Em' up remains a classy and often clever piece of film-making despite its highly preposterous plot: Davis's effective direction is cool and slick without resorting to migraine inducing visual gimmickry; stars Owen and Bellucci effortlessly ooze sex appeal and charisma, whilst Paul Giamatti, as ultra-vicious killer Hertz, is utterly loathsome; there are some inspired visual gags for the eagle-eyed; and the never-ending gun-play is both brilliantly inventive and absolutely blistering. Hell, the film even manages to deliver an ironic anti-gun message whilst all the bullets are flying and people are dying.

In short this film is everything Crank would dearly have loved to have been, and then some.

7.5 out of 10, rounded up to 8 for IMDb.