Shoot 'Em Up

[MacGuffin]

Trailer here.

Starring: Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti, Monica Bellucci  (), Greg Bryk, Stephen McHattie 

Directed by: Michael Davis 

Premise: A mysterious man delivers a baby during a shootout and is entrusted with protecting the child from criminals out to kill it.

[Raikus]

It would have made more money with its original title, "Lone Wolf and Cub."

[MacGuffin]

New Trailer

[MacGuffin]

A movie starring my man-crush and my fantasy wife? How could I not go see this? If you put Crank, Raising Arizona, Mr. And Mrs. Smith and Smokin' Aces into a blender and hit 'Mix', this is what you would come up with. Seeing Owen protecting a child in this slam-bang action romp, also kinda makes this a parody of Children Of Men. It doesn't take itself seriously; the action is SO over the top that it even makes a knowing wink at the Bugs Bunny-ness with the use of carrots.

And if skank hookers looked like Bellucci, I would be spending less money on my DVD collection.

[polkablues]

The english language is incapable of accurately describing how much I hated this movie.  I actually turned it off with less than half and hour left to go; I never do that.  As fun and ridiculous as it looked from the trailers, it never rose to the level of entertaining trash for me.  Rather than seeming like it didn't take itself seriously, it seemed like it was taking unseriousness VERY seriously, like the movie was constantly glancing over at the audience to see if we're getting it.  Every one of Clive Owen's post-kill zingers felt like a kid trying out bad pick-up lines on a girl, laughing to acknowledge that he's in on the joke but at the same time secretly hoping they'll get him laid.

Clive Owen came out of it looking all right; he's capable of bringing authenticity to even the most ridiculous nonsense.  But Paul Giamatti and Monica Bellucci were terrible.  Truly, utterly awful.  Bellucci can deflect the blame entirely onto the writing, but Giamatti was clearly trying to accomplish something, creating the sort of iconic, over-the-top bad guy that Christopher Walken nailed in The Rundown, or Hugo Weaving did in The Matrix, but he fell so far flat it just felt like a joke, like he was so busy crafting affectations that he forgot he could actually act.  One can only hope that they each learned a valuable lesson about choosing a movie just because it sounded like fun.

Although I'm sure there are plenty of people who would enjoy this movie thoroughly and have none of the problems with it that I had, I wouldn't recommend Shoot 'Em Up to anyone.  See Running Scared, see Crank, see Smokin' Aces... whatever.  All of those films succeed (to varying degrees) on a level that this film fails completely to achieve.  I'm actually angry at the film for being this bad.  I haven't felt this way since Crash.  At least I can be pretty sure this one won't win any Academy Awards.