Shoot 'Em Up
The movie starts out with a guy who delivers a baby in the middle of a shoot-out, and he cuts the umbilical cord with his gun. Yes, you read it right - he delivers a baby with his f***ing gun. That's everything you need to know about the movie. It's loud, over-the-top, and takes cartoonish violence to a Shakespearean level. If Jack Slater from Last Action Hero is a real movie, this would be it.
In Shoot 'Em Up, you'll see some of the most creative, stylistic shooting you'll ever see on-screen in live action form. It's no coincidence that our main hero, Mr. Smith (Clive Owen) frequently chews on a carrot throughout the film. He's Bugs Bunny, and this movie is a parody of the cartoon violence you'd see in Looney Tunes, as well as a homage to the ridiculous one-man-army action movies of the '80s. Specifically Arnold movies. Mostly Commando.
There are so many amazing things Michael Davis did with the art of hyperbole that I've never seen before in live action movies, and I'm about to spoil them for you in this review so DON'T read this paragraph if you wanna be surprised yourself. You have Smith offering food stamps for bullets, a baby comforted by the sound of death metal, Smith teaching the baby about guns like a surrogate father, an amazing shoot-out performed during a sex scene as Smith is shooting his 'gun' into the lead lady, a lactating hooker named Donna Quintano (Monica Bellucci), the idea of using a tank as a hideout to protect yourself (a tactic that makes so much sense but rarely used in action films), another amazing shoot-out in the middle of skydiving, and most prominent of all, the constant use of a carrot to grip the gun trigger.
All this and MUCH, MUCH MORE.
Did I also mention that the main character is well-written in what's supposed to be a homage to dumb action movies? Effort was actually put into our hero's personality. Smith is a man whose family got killed in a shoot-out (ironically), and when we first meet him in the movie, he's not really packed with a gun, so you know he's not the typical trigger-friendly action hero who carries a gun wherever unless it's for self-defense. He even supports the gun control bill the senator is passing in the movie. I find the irony of a gun-control sub-plot in a shoot-out movie very hilarious.
In the end, Shoot 'Em Out is just the exact kind of exaggeration that adrenaline junkies like myself will enjoy from start to finish. This thing makes Arnold's Commando look like that sappy soap opera, Days of Our Lives.
9/10 (Thoroughly fun every step of the way)
Enjoyability: Killerific |