Shoot ‘Em Up is the latest anti-gun movie starring Clive Owen (see also: Children of Men) and Paul Giamatti. This brainless action movie is supposed to be a satire on brainless action movies, but in the end it just insults its target audience. No wonder it is bombing at the box office.

The movie begins with Owen sitting on a bench when a pregnant woman runs by, followed by a guy chasing after her with a gun. Owen follows to rescue the girl, and a huge gunfight ensues. He even shoots guys while delivering the baby, then to top it all off he uses his gun to shoot the umbilical cord. He ends up in care of the baby, and the only person he knows to turn to for help is a hooker with a heart of gold, played by the beautiful Monica Bellucci. Together, they must protect the baby while trying to figure out why an army of goons is trying to kill them.

Paul Giamatti plays the main villain in the story, and he mentions having once worked as some kind of FBI psychologist. Giamatti may be a great actor, but there just wasn’t much he could do with this role than play it a lot like James Belushi does on his sitcom – loud and obnoxious. Like a lot of bad action movie villains, he spends too much time waxing philosophy while threatening his countless underlings.

I will admit that I laughed several times during this movie. Not because it was genuinely funny, but because it was so damn stupid. It takes all the typical action movie cliches and rubs them in your face so much that it becomes too much. For example, the hero and the bad guy are expert shots until it goes to each other, then all they do is miss. Ever noticed that in other movies? The hero can take out two dozen guys with one pistol, but at point blank range he can’t seem to hit the main villain until the end of the movie.

Nearly every action sequence in this movie ends with some kind of one-liner. Most of Owen’s dialogue is one-liners. The action sequences do have some creative elements to them, but the way they play out is just too stupid for words. As an action comedy, this does work on some levels, but it fails as a whole. I think the director, Michael Davis, was trying to do some kind of John Woo thing, but it came out looking like a music video directed by teenagers who played too much Grand Theft Auto and their entire knowledge of guns came from video games.

The left wingers in Hollywood need to quit trying to push their liberal agenda in movies and maybe they’ll actually start making money. Over the past few years, there have been several anti-gun themed movies released, and most of them were box office bombs. For example, one of Clive Owen’s last movies, Children of Men, made sure the main character never so much as touched a gun. That movie cost $70 million to produce and just barely cleared half that amount at the box office. Millions of dollars were lost on that picture. The 2003 John Grisham legal thriller Runaway Jury was about taking on an ‘evil’ gun manufacturer, and despite a heavyweight cast with the likes of John Cusack, Gene Hackman, and Dustin Hoffman, it was a box office bomb. It cost $60 million to make and did not even earn $50 million at the box office. Shoot ‘Em Up only made $5 million on its opening weekend, so it’s definitely headed to bombville, too. Audiences just don’t buy into movies like this, and the box office numbers reflect it.


Recommended:
No

Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age