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Review: 'Shoot 'Em Up' a bloodbath without guilty fun to redeem it
Ruthe Stein, Chronicle Senior Movie Writer
Friday, September 7, 2007
"Shoot 'Em Up" is not only the title of Hollywood's latest descent into nonsensical mayhem but pretty much sums up the entire inane plot as well. A mysterious loner named Smith (Clive Owen) uses 18 guns to protect a newborn whom a gang of thugs want dead. The thugs shoot at the apparently bulletproof Smith, and he shoots back with far greater success. Bang, bang, they're all dead. Roll closing credits.
There are signs that writer-director Michael Davis intended this movie to be a spoof along the lines of "Grindhouse" - upbeat music accompanying the sound of gunshots, for example, and death by insertion of a carrot. Announcing that he doesn't like old guys wearing ponytails, Smith takes aim at one and blows it away.
But Davis is no Quentin Tarantino. Gallons of blood spurt during "Shoot 'Em Up." Being bloody, however, is not the same as pulpy, and Davis lacks the winking eye that makes pulp movie fiction such a guilty pleasure. You never get the urge to laugh inappropriately at torture scenes such as a character's fingers being methodically broken one by one.
You might, however, want to cry at the waste of talent that went into this mindless bloodbath, including Peter Pau, Oscar-winning director of photography for "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," and Colin Chilvers, whose visual effects in the first "Superman" won a special achievement Oscar.
Even more distressing is the presence of Owen and Paul Giamatti. I understand the concept of working as much as possible while you're hot, but it's a slippery slope. Sean Penn once said his former friend Nicolas Cage "has become a performer, not an actor." If the supremely gifted Owen and Giamatti don't want that said of them, they need to realize that the movies actors say yes to are revealing and can and will come back to haunt them.
Giamatti appears as Hertz (what, not Avis?), a former FBI profiler gone over to the dark side as the gang's ring leader. Giamatti looked far more comfortable lifting a glass of wine in "Sideways" than a pistol. Gunfights just aren't his thing, which is a good thing.
Owen's deadpan portrayal of Smith is initially amusing. He's first seen sitting on a bench, Forrest Gump-like, waiting for a bus, when a very pregnant woman dashes by. He winds up delivering her baby by C-section during a barrage of bullets that kills her.
Smith's awkward relationship with this quickly orphaned kid is the only part of the movie with even a whiff of humanity. He makes himself the gang's target by appearing to still have the infant, whom he has pawned off on a prostitute (Monica Bellucci, not given anything to do except look beautiful), while he investigates the evil plotters.
The reason the baby must die slowly seeps out and makes about as much sense as everything else in "Shoot 'Em Up." The reason the movie got made remains a mystery too.
