Shoot 'Em Up starts as Mr. Smith (Clive Owen) is minding his own business sitting on a public bench, he then sees a pregnant woman (Ramona Pringle) run past & a guy with a gun chasing her. Smith senses trouble & goes to the aid of the woman who gives birth during a frantic shoot out between Smith a some heavily armed bad guy's who want to her. Smith decides to take the baby with him as the men also seem intent on killing it, head villain Hertz (Paul Giamatti) is annoyed at losing the baby & sets out to kill both Smith & the infant. Smith heads towards a local brothel to enlist the help of a prostitute named Donna Quintano (Monica Bellucci) to look after the baby but Hertz & his men are not far behind & Smith, Donna & the baby are forced to go on the run while trying to figure out who wants them all dead so badly. Smith uncovers a plot that goes to the highest levels of politics & big business as he tries to dodge all the bullets fired at him...
Written & directed by Michael Davis who convinced studio bosses to give him money to make Shoot 'Em Up after showing them his own computer animated action scenes (no wonder New Line Cinema went bankrupt if some stick-man animation is all it took to get millions out of them) this over the top action film is maybe meant to be a homage to the classic action films of the 80's & 90's with added 00's computer effects & extra added silliness. You can look at Shoot 'Em Up two different ways, you can take it as an adrenaline fuelled action film that never stops & has a dark sense of humour to undercut the none stop violence & mayhem or you can take it as one of the dumbest, noisy & pointless action films of recent years that tries to cover up it's lack of intelligence & imagination by bombarding the audience with a constant barrage of repetitive gun fights & bad one-liners. I am stuck somewhere between the two, sure I like mindless violence & at just over 80 minutes long Shoot 'Em Up doesn't waste any time with insignificant aspects such as character's, logic or a story while at the same time I do like my films to have some sort of depth (even if that's just giving the hero a first name...) & Shhot 'Em Up is as hollow & empty a film as I have ever seen I'm afraid. The script doesn't take itself seriously but then we won't either, the lame gags about carrots & the 'things' Smith 'hates' aren't funny the first time & certainly aren't the fifth or sixth. There's some nonsense about an anti gun politician but this is lost in the mayhem & is barely given more than a few lines, if Shoot 'Em Up was trying to have an anti gun message then it missed the boat.
Shoot 'Em Up feels more like a cartoon than a film at times, the way the laws of physics are constantly broken & the way none of the bad guy's can shoot straight. For God's sake, do we really need another film where the hero can shoot & kill anyone with one shot yet all the bad guy's in the world can't hit him once? No, we don't. Apparently director Michael Davis said that he didn't want a single explosion in Shoot 'Em Up & to have all the action scenes center around guns, guns & more guns. Shoot 'Em Up is a gun lovers dream, virtually every scene features a gun, they are definitely glamorised here & seen as powerful & cool & there's even one distasteful part where Smith talks to the new born baby & tells him all about guns. Yeah great, teach them to shoot people young right? Because of the nature of the action scenes they become incredibly repetitive but they are still quite fun to watch, Smith manages to use his gun for all sorts of things like shooting roundabouts or blowing legs off tables to make barriers. There's a decent car chase here as well & a poorly CGI rendered parachute shoot out, although Shoot 'Em Up is very violent & features plenty of blood & severed limbs it's very cartoon like.
With a supposed budget of about $39,000,000 I wasn't expecting it to be that high, I can't really see where the money went to be honest. It's well made although some of the CGI work isn't great & the ending in which Smith uses a scalpel stuck through his hand to kill a load of bad guy's is badly edited which I suspect is down to censorship issues. Filmed in Ontario in Canada. I can't say I thought the acting was much good, Clive Owen seems bored while I thought Paul Giamatti was terrible & annoying as the bad guy.
Shoot 'Em Up is mindless action entertainment for those who get off on seeing men shoot big guns at each other, there's not a lot else to this film to be honest. It's short, it has loads of violence & a few decent moments but the sheer stupidity & lack of any sort of story doesn't help it. Worth watching if you like your action films violent & dumb.
Written & directed by Michael Davis who convinced studio bosses to give him money to make Shoot 'Em Up after showing them his own computer animated action scenes (no wonder New Line Cinema went bankrupt if some stick-man animation is all it took to get millions out of them) this over the top action film is maybe meant to be a homage to the classic action films of the 80's & 90's with added 00's computer effects & extra added silliness. You can look at Shoot 'Em Up two different ways, you can take it as an adrenaline fuelled action film that never stops & has a dark sense of humour to undercut the none stop violence & mayhem or you can take it as one of the dumbest, noisy & pointless action films of recent years that tries to cover up it's lack of intelligence & imagination by bombarding the audience with a constant barrage of repetitive gun fights & bad one-liners. I am stuck somewhere between the two, sure I like mindless violence & at just over 80 minutes long Shoot 'Em Up doesn't waste any time with insignificant aspects such as character's, logic or a story while at the same time I do like my films to have some sort of depth (even if that's just giving the hero a first name...) & Shhot 'Em Up is as hollow & empty a film as I have ever seen I'm afraid. The script doesn't take itself seriously but then we won't either, the lame gags about carrots & the 'things' Smith 'hates' aren't funny the first time & certainly aren't the fifth or sixth. There's some nonsense about an anti gun politician but this is lost in the mayhem & is barely given more than a few lines, if Shoot 'Em Up was trying to have an anti gun message then it missed the boat.
Shoot 'Em Up feels more like a cartoon than a film at times, the way the laws of physics are constantly broken & the way none of the bad guy's can shoot straight. For God's sake, do we really need another film where the hero can shoot & kill anyone with one shot yet all the bad guy's in the world can't hit him once? No, we don't. Apparently director Michael Davis said that he didn't want a single explosion in Shoot 'Em Up & to have all the action scenes center around guns, guns & more guns. Shoot 'Em Up is a gun lovers dream, virtually every scene features a gun, they are definitely glamorised here & seen as powerful & cool & there's even one distasteful part where Smith talks to the new born baby & tells him all about guns. Yeah great, teach them to shoot people young right? Because of the nature of the action scenes they become incredibly repetitive but they are still quite fun to watch, Smith manages to use his gun for all sorts of things like shooting roundabouts or blowing legs off tables to make barriers. There's a decent car chase here as well & a poorly CGI rendered parachute shoot out, although Shoot 'Em Up is very violent & features plenty of blood & severed limbs it's very cartoon like.
With a supposed budget of about $39,000,000 I wasn't expecting it to be that high, I can't really see where the money went to be honest. It's well made although some of the CGI work isn't great & the ending in which Smith uses a scalpel stuck through his hand to kill a load of bad guy's is badly edited which I suspect is down to censorship issues. Filmed in Ontario in Canada. I can't say I thought the acting was much good, Clive Owen seems bored while I thought Paul Giamatti was terrible & annoying as the bad guy.
Shoot 'Em Up is mindless action entertainment for those who get off on seeing men shoot big guns at each other, there's not a lot else to this film to be honest. It's short, it has loads of violence & a few decent moments but the sheer stupidity & lack of any sort of story doesn't help it. Worth watching if you like your action films violent & dumb.