300 guns and a baby

>> Shoot ’em Up is an enjoyable,
bullet-saturated action film

by JEFFREY MALECKI

Don’t be fooled by the overblown, leather-clad machismo, profusion of violence or terrible one-liners—once you realize that Shoot ’em Up is not taking itself too seriously, it gets much better, giving Clive Owen licence to engage in all manner of absurd gun-slinging with an infant in his backpack.

Owen plays Mr. Smith, a squat-dwelling Punisher-type vigilante figure without a past who gets embroiled in a criminal plot by trying to rescue a pregnant prostitute being chased by hitmen. Smith, the baby and another prostitute (Monica Bellucci) then become the object of a chase so compact and intense that disbelief must be suspended high up in the rafters for all the pieces to fit. But this is easy to do in this enjoyably mindless film.

The focus is on guns, a lot of guns. Owen shoots an excess of guns in every imaginable situation: while walking, talking, driving, having sex, delivering a baby and, in one particularly ludicrous scene, skydiving. Guns are fondled and fetishized, dangerous but absolutely necessary, the problem and the solution, and they form the metallic centre of Shoot ’em Up’s plot. Every purse, glove compartment and jacket conceals a weapon, and all problems are resolved in a fusillade.

The stock characters thrive in their hyperbole and flatness, and are generally well-performed. The arch-villain Mr. Hertz (Paul Giamatti) is an amoral genius with a clingy wife constantly attached via cellphone. Bellucci’s reluctant gold-hearted-hooker shtick is predictable but enjoyable. Owen can do cold-blooded, pragmatic stoicism like the best of them. And then there’s the ubiquitous baby, who adds a bizarre kernel of cuddle to the whole affair, and allows for Owen’s single heartwarming scene where he describes the technical operation of a pistol to the infant. The poor tot gets thrown about the city throughout the film, and miraculously manages to avoid getting shot, as does Owen, who himself single-handedly downs no fewer than 700 henchpersons.

But remember: enter the cinema with no pretense. The shoot-’em-up genre is relatively easy to send up—even non-spoofs often end up spoofing themselves—but the ceaseless action and slick execution in Shoot ’em Up might be worth a look. Just leave your neurons at the popcorn stand.

Shoot ’Em Up opens
this Friday, Sept. 7

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