Review: Shoot 'Em Up

Short review: sheer gun-fu pornography.

Long review: If you're the kind of cat who thought that the main thing holding back The Matrix, The Professional, La Femme Nikita, Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels, The Way of the Gun, and A History of Violence was too much plot and not enough unadulterated Over The Top gun fu, congratulations, someone out there heard you. (Also, your meth dealer is on line two.) Shoot 'Em Up not only doesn't bother with a plot, it goes on to shoot holes in any plot that has the audacity to try to sneak into the film, and not just any holes, no, Sir, big, fat, juicy, bloody holes that probably have Zombie Sam Peckinpah reaching for his fork and knife. The only thing this movie is interested in is finding more bodies for its main hero to perforate and puncture, and believe me, it very rarely misses it quotas.

For some reason, the director thought he needed actual stars, so Clive Owens stars as the mysterious and frankly inexplicably talented Mr. Smith, Monica Belucci stars as a prostitute who specializes in suckling grown-up babies, and Paul Giamatti stars as a hands-on murder squad leader intent on finding Smith and a certain someone that Smith rescues (hint: he needs the lactating Ms. Belucci more than her clients do). Owens is great, Giamatti's great, and Belucci's a great body, so why does this movie feel like it should be starring Treat Williams, Virginia Madsen, and Michael Ironsides? (Answer: Because Smoking Aces only managed to sucker in Andy Garcia and Ray Liotta.)

The thing is, Shoot 'Em Up is so way, way Over The Top that I literally couldn't breathe from laughing out loud at how ridiculous, how ludicrous, how... INSANELY (forgive me, there are no other words) OVER THE TOP the entire exercise is. I wasn't too keen to see the deleted scenes, but Yoko persuaded me: "What," she said, "could they have possibly thought needed to be left out given everything they left in?" What, indeed. If you really want a so-bad-it's-good kick in the teeth, you could do a damn sight worse than Shoot 'Em Up.

ObCaveats: contains violence, sex, violence against the laws of physics, sucklings in peril, violence against your incredulity, torture, violence against your ability to suspend disbelief, and carrots. Look, I'm warning you about the carrots. Really.