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Shoot 'Em Up
Review Written by: Alex Sandell It's
the multi-colored baby bottles and the carrot in Owen's
hand that really add that extra something.
You know what I hate? The fact that this gem of an action
movie failed at the box-office. If you count the singularly excellent
experience that is Grindhouse
as two separate movies (and the fucking Weinstein Company certainly
does) -- that makes the three greatest, most irreverent thrillrides of
2007 complete financial duds.
What are you people paying to see, anyway? Spider-Man 3?!?
Shoot 'Em Up
would fit in perfectly with
Grindhouse. It may be even more over-the-top than the two
main features in that film. It's more like those classic fake trailers found in
the Tarantino/Rodriguez masterpiece.
Think Machete
and you'll have some idea of what you're in for with this movie (if you
missed the Machete
trailer that was included with Grindhouse,
you can still check it out on the Planet
Terror DVD).
This is a balls-to-the-wall, explosion of gun-porn that's so crazy it
could get the testosterone pumping through a corpse. It's a man, a carrot, a
baby, a thousand dead bodies, a million guns and a billion bullets. It's 90 minutes worth of some the most inventive action
sequences ever committed to film, buzzing your brain as it blows out
your ears with a screamingly loud soundtrack by the likes of Nirvana,
Iggy Pop, Green Day, Motorhead and Motley Crue. And it comes equipped
with a DTS 6.1 soundtrack on the standard DVD that is dying to be heard
-- by your neighbors as it blasts out of every crevice of your home.
Between the gunplay there's plenty of cheesy one-liners all delivered
with a wink and a smile by Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti -- both hamming
it up for the camera in a way that ham hasn't been hummed since Donald
Pleasence bit into Blofeld in the Bond movies back in the day. Between
the one-liners there's a topless and lactating Monica Bellucci giving
blowjobs in
exchange for enough money to buy her newfound baby a bulletproof vest.
And that's one of the film's mellow moments.
But this movie is about the guns more than anything and even the sex
scenes can't get in the way of the shooting. Clive and Monica
don't let a few dozen thugs wreck their Michael and Glenn
kitchen scene from Fatal
Attraction. Clive shoots more than bullets in this scene
and the climax ends with a ... well ... take a guess. Of course Clive
ties the scene up with a one-liner cheesy enough to top 3 deep-dish
pizzas -- "Talk about shooting your load."
Am I giving away too much in this review? I'm giving away
practically nothing. What I've described above is just a small fraction
of the memorable moments in this feature attraction.
This is about as fun as they come. It's bloody, it's funny, it's
clever, it's obscenely entertaining and it's a must-see. A must-own. A
must go-out-and-buy-today milestone of a manic movie!
Is it perfect? No. The plot is absurd enough to make Planet Terror'slook like Atonement's. The
parachuting while shooting scene is wrecked by bad FX. There's a
mangled pro-gun message mixed in with a seemingly serious cry for gun
control. But none of this wrecks the roller-coaster ride that is Shoot 'Em Up.
From beginning to end this one will put a smile on any action junkie's
face. It makes any ADD-riddled action movie that preceded it look restrained by
comparison. If you stick around for the end credits you'll be rewarded
by a James Bond-ish "title" sequence (the movie was too eager to get to
the shoot outs to put it at the beginning). But this title sequence
isn't set to the tune of some cheesy pop song -- it plays to Motley
Crue's, "Kick Start My Heart." Which is appropriate as Shoot 'Em Up is to
James Bond as Motley Crue is to Madonna.
Sit back, crack open a beer and have a blast with this soon-to-be cult
classic. Shoot 'Em Up is
that action movie you've been craving -- one that never lets up and
never says it's sorry.
