Review of Shoot 'Em Up (2007) by Alex L — 08 Jan 2011

Walking out of Shoot Em' Up I was smiling and thinking to myself "This is how parody movies actually should be." I say this because it's absolutely true. This movie is extremely entertaining, funny, and cliche on purpose. It makes fun of the action genre, but it still is a part of the action genre. It's not totally stupid the entire time, but when it is, it gets away with it because it's a parody. It's a brilliant idea when you really think about it interms of the way its done.

Owen gives a great, purposely self-serious portrayal of the hero of the film dubbed simply, "Mr. Smith" who makes wise cracks (some of which are pretty lame but I'll get to that later) and kills bad guys with such ease that he makes it look as though he's painting a picture or something. Giamatti, also going for the self-serious yet funny portrayal plays the bad guy who's very stereotypical on purpose and does a great job. He's perfectly cast. Belucci plays the love interest in the film quite well, and she's got some pretty interesting quirks. Her backstory and past are purposely cliche as well.

The action sequences are simply put, awesome. At the very beginning I did role my eyes a bit at some of the choices of music (they where a little obnoxiously stereotypical at times) however no one can deny that any of this movies many action sequences would be worthy of going at the ending of another film while they are instead dispersed throughout this ones entire run time. Whenever Owen jumps over something, there always happens to be a big mound of mattress's of some sort conveniently there to break his fall as he hits the ground smoothly. The scenes are creative and you'll see many things you've never even thought of before. Forget all those times in an action movie where you say after an action scene "That could've been so much cooler..." because you won't say that at any point this movie except perhaps at the very end ironically enough. If you love action, this movie's got it in boat loads.

The film is definetetely witty and you'll find yourself laughing hard and often. It's at its best and funniest when ridiculous things are done in the action or in the story, but generally the dialouge comes off as being a tad bit corny, but forgiveably so. Some of the dialouge is actually funny too so it's not all lame. The humor also comes from the movie pushing cliche's so far that you simply have to laugh because of how ridiculous something was. If you have a fairly dark sense of humor, you'll get a kick out of this movie for sure.

The film is also well written interestingly enough. It sets out to do exactly what it's main goal and purpose was. It's also tight and concise, definetely not overly long and not too short either. One thing you look for to see if a script is well written is if there are few loose ends and that things that are introduced in the story that seem meaningless actually become meaninful before the end of the movie. Well this movie has one small thing inparticular that keeps coming up over and over again throughout the film that works extremely well which is that Clive Owen is constantly eating carrot's. There are several reasons and they are all explained, not to mention the many creative uses that carrots serve throughout the film.

The one other thing I'd like to address is the fact that the movie is, pretty much, a take off on a Bug's Bunny cartoon. There are hints to this in the dialouge, the carrot's are a hint, and the simple attitudes that the characters have towards others and towards each other definetely would make this a likely basis for the writer-directors starting idea for the film.

If you really want to have fun this weekend go see "Shoot Em' Up". It's one of the most purely entertaining, and cool movies that I've seen in a long time and my grade on this movie has actually gone up, not down in the last week, which is an extremely rare occurence for a movie of its genre. Go check this one out, its worth a look.

8/10.