Overclocked On Caffeine v.1.1

Shoot Em Up

93 Minutes

When Shoot Em Up was released in cinemas, it was to - at best - lukewarm reviews. 'It's too shallow and brutal' they said. 'Too many gunfights, too much violence, no depth whatsoever and an utter dearth of meaningful characterisation. Just action, action, action from one end to the other, 3/10.'

Never did it seem to occur to anyone that that was precisely the point.

The movie opens with Clive Owen, a man with a face hewn from finest teak, sitting on a bench. He looks mean and moody, the most dangerous hobo ever to stir his tea with a carrot. His name - of course - is Smith. When he sees a pregnant woman being chased by a man with a gun, he finds himself drawn into a conspiracy involving a powerful anti-gun lobbying senator, a baby farm and a firearms manufacturer. And yes, this is about as simple as things ever get.

This is a movie that thrives on the Rule Of Cool - it doesn't matter how idiotic or improbable (or outright impossible) it would be in real life, if it sounds cool, it's gonna work. So we have gun factory deathtraps that would require a ludicrous amount of luck and/or planning to set up; giving birth in under five minutes while under (and returning) heavy gunfire, then shooting the umbilical cord in lieu of cutting it; and, lest we forget, killing several people with carrots. And again, these are the least convoluted moments in the entire movie, it gets worse! It's somehow fitting that the end features the slowest quickdraw contest ever seen in cinema.

Shoot Em Up is really little more than an extended love letter to the action movie genre. Clive Owen delivers a suitably pithy one liner after every massacre, while Monica Bellucci plays... well... Monica Bellucci, this time as a lactating prostitute. Standout of the show is Paul Giamatti, better known for his role in the criminally never-picked-up pilot for Mike Mignola's Amazing Screw-On Head (around these here parts at least) who is, by turns, a complete bastard and the most understanding boss ever. There is a vague attempt to give the characters some depth, which either works well (Giamatti's dealings with his family) or really, really badly (Bellucci's revelation before the obligatory 'passionate pants-on hugging' scene). How much more fun (and in keeping with the spirit of the movie) would it have been for the subplot surrounding Smith's background to have ended with him saying 'By the way, that guy? Not me!"

Shoot Em Up really is a brainless action movie - as far as the plot goes - with enough violence to make even the most jaded 80s action hero smile, and enough firepower to leave a Tetragrammaton Cleric walking funny for a week, if he was capable of feeling anything. When it comes to the inventiveness and originality in its action sequences, you'd be hard pressed to find anything smarter.