Shoot 'Em Up

I just watched the movie Shoot 'Em Up, starring Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti, and Monica Bellucci.

... and I really wish I'd seen it in the theaters when I had the chance.

First of all, any movie with the title Shoot 'Em Up and the ad campaign this film had is going to be an action movie. But Shoot 'Em Up isn't just an action film; it is a love song to gun-toting action films in the same way that Big Trouble in Little China is a love song to Hong Kong action films.

And that sentence alone will likely determine if you even see the movie or read any further.

For those of you who haven't fled in a mad burst of rapid-clicking, Shoot 'Em Up had me cheering throughout the movie. Yes, cheering. Out loud. At my television set, when I'm the only one in the house. It is a smart, genuinely funny, film.

Smart, because the movie designers know all the tropes of the action film and push them even further without tipping over into outright camp or spoof, and that takes some skill. Clive Owen is a good choice for the antihero with a bad attitude and a need for redemption, Monica Bellucci is the prostitute with a heart of gold, and Paul Giamatti is the funniest, nastiest, villain I've seen in a long time, completely stealing the show as he masticates the scenery into oblivion.

The plot is outrageous: save the baby whose sole purpose is as a bone marrow donor for a corrupt Senator desperately clinging to life. As the Senator pushes for strong gun control legislation, the gun manufacturers want the baby dead, thus effectively ending the threat from the Senator.

And then there are the action scenes, including:

• gun fights in free fall.
  
• the protagonist getting into a head-on collision with the bad guys' van, propelled forward at the moment of collision and diving through his shot-out windshield, through the bad guys' shot-out windshield, and into the back of their van, where he systematically shoots all of them
  
• gun battle while in coitus with Monica Bellucci--an Academy Award winning scene if I've ever seen one.
  

Everything in this film is turned up to, and past, 11. Everything in the film is insane, outrageous, bizarrely over the top ... and it all works. It all genuinely WORKS, without descending into spoof or outright camp, and that's what impressed me the most. I'm laughing, cheering, screaming "Oh, FUCK NO WAY!", and having a blast the entire time, without ever feeling that the movie is meant to mock the action genre or its fans.

And that takes some doing.