Shoot `Em Up

Reviewed By Rich Drees

     It’s perhaps ironic that the best action movie of the summer should hit theaters at the tail end of the blockbuster season. After nearly four months of high-concept and high-budget action spectacles that fail to satisfy on various levels, Shoot `Em Up arrives with a decidedly simple plotline that makes no pretence of being any more than what it is- an all-out, crazy series of increasingly impossible stunts and gunfights.

     A grizzled man, whom we will soon learn is known only as Smith (Clive Owen), sits at a bus stop, absent-mindedly eating a raw carrot. A pregnant woman rushes by, a ducks down a nearby alleyway. She is soon followed by a rather nefarious, gun-totting man. Smith appears to think the situation over and, with a curse, gets up and follows the two down the alley. He quickly finds himself in the middle of a shoot out with men who want the woman dead, delivering her baby while, picking off his attackers with deadly precision. The men succeed in killing the mysterious woman, leaving Smith on the run protecting the newborn from the pursuing Mr. Hertz (Paul Giamatti) and a seemingly unending stream of gunmen.

     I could tell you more about the plot - there’s some nonsense about the arms industry and a presidential candidate on the take – but there’s not much point. The whole thing is a paper thin as your average video game premise. In fact, Shoot `Em You is probably a better video game movie than any film actually based on a video game. The characters run from one scenario to another, making their way through each action set piece blasting away at whatever obstacle pops up in their way. In some ways, it is an American version of the 1990s Hong Kong classic Hardboiled from director John Woo, except that the action is more anarchic than gracefully choreographed.

     Shoot ‘Em Up is a nothing more than adrenaline-soaked popcorn, completely aware of what it is and is unabashedly unapologetic in its brazenness. Logic and physics fly happily out the window as the script offers up new and inventive ways for Smith to take out his opponents. The numerous warehouses many of these fights take place in provide plenty of inventive opportunities for Smith to get the drop on his pursuers. There’s another gunfight that comes as an interruption to a rather intimate moment that has to be seen to be believed. And when he isn’t chomping on an ever present carrot, Smith proves that even a root vegetable can be deadly in the right hands.

     Owen’s loner Smith and Monica Belucci’s hooker-with-a-hidden- heart-of-gold, to whom Smith turns to for help, may be clichés, but each actor instills their characters with a bit of depth and shading just appropriate enough to ground the movie. The action may stray into cartoonish territory, but the characters never do. It’s a tough tight walk to traverse, but they do it with a style and grace that unfortunately we could have used more of these past few months at the movies.