Shoot ‘Em Up

Shoot 'Em Up (2007) is a send-up of hyper-intensive action films that itself is a good example of the genre. From the opening scene, when a man casually sitting on a bench sees a woman in labor running frantically past him, trying to escape the gunmen who are trying to kill her, we know two things: first, that the man on the bench, an eponymous Mr. Smith (Clive Owens) is going to play a major role (he's the main character) and that the film itself is going to go as far over the top as it can possibly manage.

We cannot watch Shoot 'Em Up with any concern for realism, logic, or the laws of physics. If we're squeamish about violence and gunplay, this is not the right film for the evening. Rather we just have to watch it, and it's eminently watchable. It is full of violence, guns, bullets, shootings, killings of every imaginable sort, incredible stunts (many enhanced or entirely finessed with CGI), plot intricacies, and flagrant moments of absurdity. It is probably the only film I have seen that uses a baby's dirty diaper as a weapon against a bad guy. It is the only film I have seen in which the hero clutches a newborn infant under one arm while shooting adversaries using the other arm. It is the only film I can recall which features a gun battle between twelve or so men in free fall thousands of feet above the earth—when the hero successfully lands, the ground around him is littered, or should I say spattered, with the carcasses of the men he has shot in mid-air.

In addition to the newborn (whose mother dies early in the film), we have a ruthless and cerebral mastermind who oversees the henchmen trying to kill the baby. His name is Hertz (Paul Giamatti), and he works for an unnamed employer who turns out to be a corrupt United States senator on track for election to the presidency. We also have an embittered and ultimately good-hearted prostitute (Monica Bellucci) whose baby was recently stillborn. We have three women hired to be artificially inseminated so that their offspring could provide bone marrow to save the dying sperm donor's life. And we have a central theme of gun control—a gun manufacturer trying to co-opt a powerful gun control advocate.

And so it goes. There's nary a loose thread in the film, everything's neatly tied together (or should I saw shot to bits) by the end of the film, which doesn't feel that neatly made. It brims over with movement and energy. Shoot 'Em Up reminded me of the Clint Eastwood film The Gauntlet (1977, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood), also a send-up (supposedly) of violent crime films. This film didn't receive as much attention as The Gauntlet, but it is better made.

Paul Giamatti overacts throughout, in a way that is enjoyable enough and consistent with the film itself. Clive Owen plays a generic tough-guy hero. I never figured out who he was supposed to be—some sort of secret operative trained from childhood to be a master marksman. Michael Davis is the director. I'm not familiar with his work. The film has a British feel to it.

If you settle in and accept the basic rules of Shoot 'Em Up, it is entertaining and sometimes mesmerizing--non-stop gunplay, hilarious dialogue, ridiculous stunts, surprising plot turns, thematic ironies, and men who die like animated figures in a Warner-Brothers cartoon. One may complain that Shoot 'Em Up becomes what it satirizes, and that may be the point.