Mutant Reviewers from Hell do
"My god! Do we really suck or this guy really that good? "

2007 R / Action Directed by: Michael Davis Starring: Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti, Monica Bellucci

Tagline

I'm a British nanny and I'm dangerous.

Summary Capsule

Glum Englishman fires thirty million bullets while toting around newborn baby and French hooker. There was some kind of plot about gun control, but trust me, you're better off not knowing.

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Amazon.com: DVD

Shalen's Rating: BANG

Shalen's Review: This was not at ALL what I expected.

I mean, yes, I was looking for a brainless actioner, and this is indeed a film both brainless and involving many violent situations. That doesn't begin to describe all the other wackiness involved here. The elements of the "plot" are utterly goofy and frequently crass, but I'll try and summarize more or less:

"Whether or not you're likely to enjoy this trash depends on your appetite for same - do you think the lactating hooker concept is funny?"

A bunch of guys are trying to chase down and shoot a pregnant lady in a laboratory smock, but run into an obstacle in the form of lanky, depressed bystander John Smith, who is eating a carrot at a bus stop past which said pregnant lady runs. He promptly jumps in on her side, delivers her baby,¹ and disposes of henchpersons using both the carrot and various guns. Despite this skillset he is unable to prevent her from being shot in the head, which leaves him saddled with the baby.

The rest of the movie is him trying to keep the baby alive while finding out why people want to kill it. He does this with the help of a French lactating hooker² and while pursued by a creepy pervert with glasses and a goatee, someone on the production having decided that a man who supervises henchpersons for a corrupt American senator should look as much as possible like middle management at a technology company. This hench manager enjoys groping dead pregnant women and is frequently on the phone to a shrill and controlling stay-at-home wife (ha ha!).

Meanwhile, the movie goes over the top in all kinds of other ways, from the aforementioned hooker concept to the scene where John puts the baby into an empty bathtub, starts having sex with the hooker, then shoots a number of henches who arrive suddenly without stopping the aforementioned activity. The scene is all kinds of stupid and so are many, many other things that happen in this movie.

Whether or not you're likely to enjoy this trash depends on your appetite for same - do you think the lactating hooker concept is funny? Do you feel that dirty diapers are inherently funny? How about the F-word? Or carrots? If you answered "no" to any of the foregoing, or if you prefer movies you watch to have dialogue that in any way resembles normal human speech, you're going to want to either refrain from watching this or watch it under the influence of powerful drugs so that you won't remember anything afterwards.

I'm pretty sure that's what the director did.

1. She's in labor for perhaps thirty seconds, giving most female members of the audience a good reason to cheer on the guys who shoot her.
2. And thank you so much to the dirty old men who run Hollywood for introducing me to that concept.

Justin's Rating: BLAM! KA-KACHOW!

Justin's Review: Most people who know me will tell you, without pause, that I am a guy. And as a member of the guy species, I have a particular - if inexplicable - fondness for movies that feature over-the-top action and people wielding two pistols without the expected wrist fatigue. I know it's dumb. I acknowledge how horrible gun crime is in the world today. I fully support anyone who wants to make an argument about how these kinds of movies pander to the lowest common denominator in our prehistoric hunter-gatherer skulls.

"While Shoot 'Em Up would never hold up in a court of good filmanship, it does a spectacular job in scratching that action-shooter itch you might be feeling."

Yet every now and then? I need a gruff, angry dude - who sports the kind of expression one might expect from a porcupine intrusion in tender areas - to leap around in my television box and single-handedly slaughter more bad guys than the Allies did to the Nazis in doubya-doubya-two. It fills a need within me, and perhaps keeps me from grabbing celery stalks in the grocery store and getting into pretend shoot-outs with the understandably perturbed produce clerks.

While Shoot 'Em Up would never hold up in a court of good filmanship, it does a spectacular job in scratching that action-shooter itch you might be feeling. Borderline parody, this movie strips away what little plot other shoot 'em ups might sport, and boils it down to scene after scene of intensely ludicrous yet awesome gun battles.

Stony-faced film noir Smith (Clive Owen, reprising his Sin City role) is just your average ex-military expert-pistoleer who just so happens to spot a shady character pursuing a pregnant lady into a warehouse. Angrily biting off a piece of his only character trait - a carrot - Smith follows her in and subsequently gets sucked into a power struggle involving thugs, senators, babies, prostitutes, bone marrow and weapons contractors.

Ignore the plot, really. It's silly nonsense that serves to strain believability - and also to poke fun at similar genre films and their attempts to provide a framework for their hero to run willy-nilly around with a six-shooter and no police presence.

What gives Shoot 'Em Up it's zesty pepperjack sauce is the love and care that writer/director Michael Davis (who wrote, this is true, the script for Double Dragon) injects into the proceedings. With an obvious tip of the hat to John Woo, Davis crafts shootouts that defy, then nipple-twist the laws of physics and the magazine capacity for small arms, but look really, really cool anyway. It's the kind of movie where a guy can jump off a bridge with a baby in his arms, shoot out the sunroof of a car on the way down, land in the driver's side seat, and start the car within a couple seconds. We all know that, say, if I tried that stunt? I'd probably shoot a hole in the radiator and CD player, my left leg would go through the sunroof but my right would stay on the outside of the car, my crotch would be on the receiving end of a buttload of pain, and the baby would go merrily bouncing down the road to its destiny.

So I'm really all for just watching something like this done instead of trying to save a few bucks and recreate the experience at home.

What can I say? I'm a weak individual and I like my occasional perversions. You other guys out there will back me up, right? Right?

I've got a carrot and I know how to use it! Give me all the Pampers and nobody gets hurt. Okay, I'm pointing the gun at him. Now what?

Didja Notice? [some sources: IMDb]

• Forget the vest. The baby is obviously made of kevlar.
• What are the odds of accidentally catching a bullet between the eyes while being carried up a stairwell by someone whose body is between you and the shooters?
• The many uses of carrots.
• That's clearly a very bright rat. Maybe they let it write the script. Or maybe they should have.
• I was going to say "weirdest brothel room ever," but that would suggest I knew what the normal standard for brothel rooms was.
• Finding an important clue through necrophilia.
• Doing fellatio to get money to buy a kevlar vest for the baby. Classy.
• Best place to hide an infant from someone trying to kill it? Inside a tank, obviously.
• IMDB sez Hertz has a Freemasons pin on his coat.
• Carrots are not good for your health, after all
• Guns are good tools for everything, even cutting the umbilical chord
• Couldn't he just get some baby formula?
• Bullet-proof baby vest? Essential.
• Think that might be the first gun battle scene where the protagonist is simultaneously shooting and having sex
• Free fall bullet fest!

Is It Worth Staying Through End Credits?

I don't know. My eyeballs had protectively shut down by that point, along with many brain cells that are still not yet back online.

Intermission! [some sources: IMDb]

The first gun Smith uses is a Walther PPK, the usual gun of James Bond. The gun jams on him, and he calls it a "piece of shit." This is an in-joke to the fact that Clive Owen was once considered for the role of James Bond (the role eventually went to Daniel Craig).

Groovy Quotes

John Smith: F*** you, you f***ing f***ers.

Mr. Hertz: My god! Do we really suck or this guy really that good?

John Smith: Talk about shooting your load off.

Mr. Hertz: Guns don't kill people, but they sure do help!

John Smith (repeated line): You know what I hate?

Mr. Hertz: I was just remembering a limmerick. There once was a woman who was quite begat. She had three babies named Nat, Pat, and Tat. She said it was fun in the breeding, but found it was hell in the feeding when she saw there was no tit for Tat. You have caused me no end of trouble, but now I shall return the favor. Tit for Tat, right?

Counter lady: You want to buy bullets with food stamps?
John Smith: It's just as good as cash.

Man Who Rides Shotgun: Hey, uh, don't you think you should hang back, sir?
Mr. Hertz: The leader who stays in the rear, takes it in the rear. Besides, violence is one of the most fun things to watch.

Mr. Smith: What's up, doc?
Mr. Hertz: You wascally wabbit.

If you liked this movie, try these:

• Children of Men
• Sin City
• Die Hard