Cinema

New Film: Shoot ‘Em Up

Posted by: Johnny Loftus on September 7, 2007 at 11:00 am

shootemup.jpg
SHOOT ‘EM UP (2007)

“Giamatti is exactly what a film such as this needs,” went our review of the trailer for Shoot ‘Em Up. “Not to mention the serious gravity of Owen, whose leading man’s face seems perpetually pulled to his shoes by battleship chains. It needs top-shelf talent because it has no core; it’s 100% artifice, with an additional 30% of explosivity provided by crafty editing and sound design. We know this, and we haven’t even seen it yet.”Now that we have seen it, we know we were right. Shoot ‘Em Up is explosive to the power of Woo, sour, and darkly comic, and what little exists of its plot is confusing only because writer-director Michael Davis cares as little about it as we do. He includes some rehashed TV movie-level crap about a dirty presidential hopeful, gun lobbies, and a goonish weapons manufacturer. But really, Davis wants to get back to the gun fights. And that’s exactly what he does every five minutes or so.

Owen’s Mr. Smith is in hate with the world, so when he thwarts an attempted hit on a woman and her baby by Hertz and his band of black car coat henchmen, it’s not because he has any great desire to be the lone hero. It’s because he’s pissed that such things are allowed to happen. The woman dies, the baby lives, and suddenly Smith is on the run with a kid who isn’t his and the lactating call girl (Monical Belucci) he coerces into caring for it. (In this city, lactating call girls are more prevalent than pawn shops.) Belucci is also Owen’s love interest, but Davis isn’t interested in developing that angle either, except to set up another outrageous set piece. How outrageous? Jason Statham and Amy Smart had sex in the streets of Chinatown in the 2006 adrenaline cartoon Crank. But the passers by in that sequence weren’t trying to kill them.

The shooting, spurting blood, and gruff comebacks continue through numerous warehouses, a playground, a munitions factory, and the air beneath a passenger airliner. There’s a car chase, too, and it ends with the best bit of action/comedy/outrageousness in a film full of such slash moments. Smith gets the better of this latest batch of thugs in such an unbelievable way, in fact, that Hertz can’t even believe it. “Goddamnit!” he exclaims, “That’s just twisted!” and we like Hertz for being our mouthpiece even as we hope he gets his from Smith in the end.

Since Shoot ‘Em Up really is just a series of gun fights strung together with bitter one-liners, its store of them could have been better. But however Davis got Owen and Giamatti attached to this — his last film of any note was 1997’s Eight Days a Week, remembered only for costar Keri Russell’s near-nude scene — he should thank them profusely, because without that caliber of actor, the film would fail miserably. Owen says little but still conveys Smith’s bitter pragmatism perfectly, and Giamatti chews scenes with manic glee. He and Owen make their characters likeable, despite the fact that they’re both murderous bastards, and that’s what saves Shoot ‘Em Up from being too empty or loony for its own good. Gun fights are great, but they have to have something surrounding them. And in this film, that’s acidic wit. Oh yeah, and a lactating hooker. — Johnny Loftus

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