|
|
| |
 |
| |
| Released: |
2007 |
| |
|
| Genre: |
ACTION
BLACK COMEDY
CRIME
THRILLER
COMEDY
|
| |
|
| Origin: |
US |
| |
|
| Colour: |
C |
| |
|
| Length: |
100 |
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
MIXED Reviews
|
|
|
|
|
| There's a little bit of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in Shoot 'Em Up, although this production isn't as smart or as slick. Shoot 'Em Up is one huge send-up of the action genre, and pretty much consists of shoot-outs and chases overtaking each other like waves rolling onto a beach, each more over-the-top than its predecessor. Everything is played for laughs and the body count easily hits the triple digits, although it's tough to keep track accurately. It's all carnage and mayhem, all the time. One scene gives new meaning to the term "coitus interruptus," and there's a strong argument that when Clive Owen is in a nearby car, it's best to use your turn signal. When it comes to road rage, this guy's pretty intense... There isn't a credible moment in the entire enterprise, and that's intentional. Any review that uses the terms "preposterous" or "unrealistic" in a pejorative sense has missed the point. I like Shoot 'Em Up's audacity and its willingness to push the envelope beyond the limits of good taste. In the end, it's a little too long and uneven to recommend outright, but I won't deny having enjoyed aspects of what Davis is offering. Drinking the full adrenaline-with-a-wink cocktail might be too much, but there's nothing wrong with sampling it. |
| (James Berardinelli, Reelviews) |
| Half a dozen fight scenes into the action-movie parody/exemplar Shoot 'Em Up, a minion asks Paul Giamatti's smirking thug character whether he wants to risk personally pursuing ludicrously lethal quarry Clive Owen. Giamatti shrugs off the danger with a derisive comment about people leading from the rear, then adds, avidly, "Besides, violence is one of the most fun things to watch." He's clearly talking directly to the viewers, taking them into his sleazy confidence: The line (which has been widely attributed to Quentin Tarantino) amounts to a pat on the head and a forgiving license to enjoy the film's gleeful, enjoyably mindless excesses, which don't reach much further thematically than "Whee! Violence!"... It's all meant as gory good fun, but once the novelty wears off half an hour in, the rest of the film is only meant for people who absolutely agree with Giamatti's character about that violence thing. |
| (Tasha Robinson, The Onion) |
| Director Michael Davis makes the transition from straight-to-DVD stinkers to the bigscreen in conspicuous fashion, with an action movie that is violent and vile in equal measure... Somewhere in all this lies a statement about gun control, a mixed message if ever there was one, and New Line shouldn't be surprised to find this pic in the sights of concerned parents. Though it belongs to the same questionable new category of exploitation film as Smokin' Aces and Domino, there's nothing to say Davis' audacious style wouldn't function equally well with less offensive material. One can only imagine how his energetic talents might have redeemed The Pacifier. |
| (Peter Debruge, Variety) |
| Getting worked up over Shoot 'Em Up's excessive bloodshed is playing right into its hands. So instead of slamming its loud-and-proud Looney Tunes carnage as indicative of a cultural desire to view violence as detached, consequence-free spectacle, perhaps it's better to simply ask: When action is this thoroughly, willfully divorced from any sense of gravity (both the tonal and scientific sort), how is anyone supposed to be excited by it? Aimed at hormonal, Xbox-ing 13-year-old boys who like their mayhem phony and their one-liners plentiful, Michael Davis's film is an extended demo reel for the director's expertise at special effects-laden gunfights, charting with much bombast, tongue-in-cheek humor, and mild sexism the efforts of mysterious man-with-a-fake-name Mr. Smith (Clive Owen) and his lactating Madonna/whore sidekick DQ (Monica Bellucci) as they attempt to protect a computer-generated infant from murderous criminal Mr. Hertz (Paul Giamatti). Davis makes no pretense at believability, casting his story as a superficially titillating R-rated cartoon—replete with Owen comically chomping on a big (and deadly) carrot and Giamatti fuming at his wascally adversary like a sadistic Elmer Fudd—and there's an undeniable verve to his go-for-broke set pieces, which mainly revolve around Smith heroically cutting down hordes of faceless enemies amid wacko situations such as childbirth (he severs the umbilical cord with a bullet), skydiving, and screwing DQ ("Talk about shooting your load," he quips)... While Shoot 'Em Up successfully replicates the rhythm and energy of a first-person shooter videogame, it forgets — or cares to ignore the fact — that videogames are always more fun to play than to simply watch. |
| (Nick Schager, slant magzine) |
| Michael Davis' exercise in whacked-out comic book gore is one of those movies that winks at you between outrageous action set pieces: you know it's saying something about gun culture, violence and the traditional family, but you're too busy reeling from the sight of, say, Clive Owen severing an umbilical chord with automatic gunfire in the first scene (or of Paul Giamatti feeling up the baby's dead mother in the second... spoiler alerts be damned – and please don't shoot the messenger)... It's disgusting fun that would be potentially hateful were it not for the commentary – half-intelligible through the blood and gun smoke – and the brilliantly choreographed and lensed combat, which almost never stops. Owen and Giamatti have a ball at opposite ends of the intensity throttle; Bellucci can't deliver a line in English but makes a fantastic wet nurse; the baby ages 10 weeks in 24 hours; Toronto plays New York very, very badly. Shoot 'Em Up is unhinged, unsettling and unforgettable. |
| (Kieran Grant, Eye Weekly) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
, Hertz - Paul Giamatti
