This Bugs Bunny Loves Guns, Too
The PopcornReel.com Movie Review: "Shoot 'Em Up"
By Omar P.L. Moore/September 8, 2007
What's Up Doc? Clive Owen as Mr. Smith (with carrot in tow) in
"Shoot 'Em Up", written and directed by Michael Davis. (Photo: Alan
Markfield/New Line Cinema)
Michael Davis's "Shoot 'Em Up" can best be described as a bizarre and wickedly
entertaining cartoon satire of action violence. Subversive and cheeky to
its core, "Shoot 'Em Up" has the kinetic energy of "The Matrix" and the heart of
"Kill Bill". If you decide to add a touch of Sergio Leone and John Woo,
Mr. Davis's film, which opened across the United States and Canada yesterday, is
precisely what you end up with.
Clive Owen plays the appropriately-named Mr. Smith, a reluctant anti-hero whose
nowhere day has just been made very late at night, in an opening shot that
emulates the very start of Mr. Owen's appearance in "Inside Man" immediately
after its post-opening credits. A gun-toting man who just can't eat enough
carrots (or use enough of them as weapons), he is very quickly thrust into
action as he sees the life of a pregnant woman in danger from a band of thugs
led by Mr. Hertz (Paul Giamatti) who plays Wile E. Coyote in his most human form
and spends much of "Shoot 'Em Up" chasing after the very Bugs Bunny-like Mr.
Smith, whose comedy is smothered in sardonic ironies, replicating the film's
nihilistic tone. Mr. Davis couldn't mix more polar opposites than he does
here, and the result is a sometimes unnerving, always violent and riotously
funny 100 minutes of action. The alluring Monica Bellucci is along for the
ride as DQ, a prostitute who is supposed to take care of a baby while Mr. Smith
makes sure that the day has been saved. Smith and Hertz match wits and
trade amusing dialogue and wordplay, particularly in a sequence where competing
bullets will make the organizers of the Scripps Spelling Bee blush.
Monica Bellucci as DQ, in "Shoot 'Em Up", which has the energy and
occasional monochromatic look of "The Matrix". Ms. Bellucci was in "The
Matrix Revolutions". (Photo: James Dittiger/New Line Cinema)
There are periods where "Shoot 'Em Up" falls flat, mainly in its dialogue
between Mr. Owen and Ms. Bellucci. They don't have much of a spark on
screen, and there is a feeling that the director is more concerned about evoking
a 1940's Humphrey Bogart-damsel-in-distress/endangered moll relationship between
the two than any meaningful connection between their characters in the context
of the story. After all, in Mr. Davis's cartoon world, no one is supposed
to feel anything. As moviegoers will plainly see, the results of violence
are only numbing and antiseptic in the animated cartoon world, and not in Mr.
Davis's film. There are numerous scenes invoking hilarious metaphors --
most especially during a sex scene that gives new meaning to going to the phrase
"going to a boxing match and watching a hockey game break out". And the
biggest laughs come when the baby, which is at the center of all the most
subversive and satirical points of "Shoot 'Em Up", illustrates what being a baby
being brought up amidst a violent American society is all about. Mr. Davis
obviously makes his point very clear in such a cartoonish atmosphere, yet the
point rings home even more loudly as the laughs bellow through theater auditoria
everywhere -- and such satire is about all the aspects of good that "Shoot 'Em
Up", which is a wild, crazy, frenetic ride, has.
Number One With A Silver Bullet: Paul Giamatti as Mr. Hertz packs a punch
and goes a-hurtin' in Michael Davis's cartoon action-violence satire "Shoot 'Em
Up". (Photo: James Dittiger/New Line Cinema)
Mr. Owen's character hates all the annoying little things in human beings -- a
facial tick, a loud slurp of coffee, a driver who doesn't signal when changing
lanes on the road -- and he makes them all pay. He is road rage
personified and audiences will get to live out their everyday revenge fantasies
vicariously through Mr. Smith. And the director has some tongue-in-cheek
fun with a play on the 007 logo, which has a gun attached to the "7" as
Bond-lovers everywhere know -- a reference to Owen's initial time in the running
to play James Bond, perhaps? ("I'm a British nanny, and I'm dangerous",
Owen says in his trademark deadpan English accent.) In some ways, Mr.
Smith is reminiscent of Owen's character in "Croupier", except much more
anti-social and detached from any sense of morality.
Mr. Giamatti's Mr. Hertz character knows the meaning of close shaves. His
wife, whom we never see, has a funny habit of calling Hertz on his cell phone at
the right "wrong" moment -- it seems to ring at the perfect time for comic
effect throughout the movie. It's almost as if she is calling him in from
the violent playground he inhabits to come home and eat dinner. His dinner
will inevitably be cold, but not nearly as cold as the cold-blooded killings
that proliferate the director's busy canvas. Giamatti has many of the
great lines (he even steals Barbara Bush's infamous "why should I waste my
beautiful mind . . . ?" remark for effect), and his maniacal character is
perfect for the upheaval and madness of "Shoot 'Em Up", but the film eventually
runs out of gas from one breathtakingly ridiculous action sequence too many.
In this hyperbolic laugher, Mr. Davis, Mr. Owen, and Mr. Giamatti have far too
much fun -- and the audience will be too busy laughing to see that the film's
wacky joyride has long since expired before the stylish end credits hit the
screen.
"Shoot 'Em Up" is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for
pervasive strong bloody violence, sexuality and some language. There is a
lot of peril-related incidents involving a baby, which some in the audience
(particularly mothers!) may find distressing, especially as much of it is played
for laughs. The film's duration is one hour and 33 minutes.
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