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Go Home 'up' Is Down

THE PLANK SEPTEMBER 7, 2007

'up' Is Down

BY TNR STAFF AND TNR STAFF

I love Clive Owen. I love Paul Giamatti. And I love--actually, given that my wife is also a contributor to this blog, I will leave to readers' imaginations how I feel about Monica Bellucci.

I did not, however, love Shoot 'Em Up. Or even like it. If one were feeling generous, one could say that director Michael Davis's homage/parody/distillation of the action genre succeeds on its own terms. But I'm not, so I'll say instead that the terms on which it succeeds are set far too low.

As its title suggests, Shoot 'Em Up is not terribly interested in narrative coherence, character motivation, or moral theory. Rather, the questions it poses tend to be along the lines of "Could you kill a guy by ramming a carrot into his mouth so hard it comes out the back of his neck?"; "What if you stabbed him in the eye with it instead?"; and "If you shot and killed a bunch of skydivers in mid-flight before their chutes opened, would they scatter across a wide area, or all splat on the ground right next to each other?"

Fine, so far. If anything, too many action movies lard themselves up with windy philosophizing (say, 300) when their only real purpose is to explore the various injuries human malice is capable of inflicting on human flesh.

So Shoot 'Em Up careens heedlessly from bullet-ridden set piece to bullet-ridden set piece. The villains sneer cruelly before receiving the inevitable cap in the head; Clive Owen's hero (known only as "Smith") drops gleeful F-bombs ("Fuck you, you fuckin' fuckers") and Ahnoldesque puns ("So much for wearing your seatbelt," after he's launched himself through the windshield of a car like a human projectile) as he rids the world of untold thousands of Bad Men; and Monica Bellucci tousles irritably with the English language. Guns are ubiquitous: In addition to their more typical uses, they are also put to work on tasks as varied as cutting umbilical cords and spinning playground carousels.

For some, the mix will work--though to up the odds, I'd recommend waiting to see it with several male friends, in someone's basement, with a substantial quantity of liquor present. Otherwise, like me, you may find that the humor's not really very funny; the tough-guy dialogue is remarkably uninspired; and the violence, while occasionally inventive--the car-launched, human-bullet bit was pretty good, and a scene in which Owen shoots a half-dozen baddies while in the midst of unexpectedly acrobatic coitus is probably almost as funny as it was on paper--is more often notable for its excess than its imagination. Even the film's cruel streak, in which it takes particular delight--the murdered mothers, the broken fingers--feels a little rote by this time.

Owen is fine, but he suggests again--as he did in Sin City--that he's more comfortable playing cool, cerebral hoods than participating in hyperviolent camp. (Where have you gone, Kurt Russell?) Paul Giamatti, as always, does his level best as the chief baddie, but he's hampered by dialogue ("And let that be a reminder never to fail me again") and gags (a wife who keeps calling his cell phone to remind him to make it to his son's birthday party) too lame for even his gifts to rescue. And Bellucci is as unlovely as I've seen her be--and while that still places her somewhere in the top .001 percent of the population, it's nonetheless a disappointment.

In the end, what's most frustrating about Shoot 'Em Up is that it would have been so easy to make the film much, much better. A ten percent improvement in the dialogue alone would have improved the movie by 50 percent. Even without being particularly clever, the plot twists could have been a bit less howlingly obvious. (When Owen shoots, and apparently kills, Giamatti early in the film, can you guess what the latter is wearing under his shirt? How do you imagine Owen will ever get a gun to work when we're told--repeatedly--that it can only be activated by its owner's thumbprint?)

When Owen finally meets the shadowy men behind the nefarious plot (they're trying to get an orphan baby whom Owen had rescued--oh, never mind) it turns out--surprise!--that they are gun manufacturers intent on preventing the passage of gun control legislation. Owen has an angry line about them protecting the "right to go deer hunting with an Uzi" and, when he kills the CEO, taunts "Aren't guns fucking great?" He has, of course, by this time expended more ammunition by himself than is needed to settle most civil wars, and though the irony is (one hopes) intentional, it's no less inane for it. Kiss kiss, bang bang.

--Christopher Orr

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16 comments

The best example of this subgenre-- the "we're subverting the action movie while we celebrate it" thing-- is easily Hot Fuzz. But if you want to go back a few years, True Lies works on this level, and it's fucking awesome, too.

- ejbenjamin

September 7, 2007 at 4:17pm

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I couldn't agree more about Hot Fuzz, which managed to succeed brilliantly on two levels. (It also made me very wary of gardening shops.) And I was planning on seeing Shoot 'Em Up just to gaze at Clive Owen. Now, I guess, not so much.

- drdannyu

September 7, 2007 at 4:36pm

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Wait ... who's Chris Orr married to? I had half hoped this would be a decent movie. Mostly because I like the scene in the ads where Clive Owen shoots the back of a file cabinet and one of the drawers flies out and hits a dude in the head.

- ratnerstar

September 7, 2007 at 4:41pm

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Actually called this movie a "worthless piece of garbage." Ouch.

- jhildner

September 7, 2007 at 4:41pm

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...But this isn't encouraging. The Onion's AV Club had a more lukewarm review. Speaking of which, if anyone here is interested in something along the lines of Chris's excellent Home Movies column, the AV Club's Nathan Rabin has been running an excellent bi-weekly feature called "My Year of Flops." This week's entry on The Fountain (http://tinyurl.com/2fjkac) is typically excellent. You can begin to catch up with the whole series by starting with the first film, Elizabethtown, by following this link: http://tinyurl.com/262am4 The entries on Paint Your Wagon and The Real Cancun are special treats. Anyway, I love Clive Owen, but my wife probably loves him more. I kind of expect that this flick will put the final nail in the coffin of summer blockbuster season. Weird that Kill Bill didn't get referenced in this review, since I would guess that this is the closest relation. Thanks for the update!

- kerouac9

September 7, 2007 at 4:45pm

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Sorry, I would have posted sooner, but all the saliva cascading out of my mouth at the sight of the words "Monica Bellucci" shorted out my keyboard. What was the question? Oh yeah. I'm not a big fan of paradies. They are too often, quoth Steely Dan, showbiz kids making movies of themselves. At best, academic exercises or, if I need my self-esteem lifted, opportunities for me to tell myself I get it. You can't spell homage without "ego."

- williamyard

September 7, 2007 at 4:56pm

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I can. Watch. "homaje" Thank you.

- boneill

September 7, 2007 at 5:34pm

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I can dig it.

- williamyard

September 7, 2007 at 5:42pm

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This just occured to me, are you the actor form The Mighty Ducks?

- samwilson

September 7, 2007 at 5:46pm

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I'll take Chris's reviews over anything in the Times, anyday. Clive Owen is one of the best actors around, way underrated. Superb in Closer.

- teplukhin

September 7, 2007 at 7:51pm

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I'd watch a 2 hour Pepsi ad if Monica Belluci was in it. The woman should be frozen solid and hung in Florence.

- The Ignorant Populist

September 7, 2007 at 8:37pm

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Oops: Chris didn't like Closer, as I recall. Meanwhile, A.O. Scott, who called Shoot 'em Up "worthless garbage," gave Closer a good review. Anyway, the Times has fine movie critics who write fine reviews -- I particularly like Manohla Dargis. No need to get cranky whenever the Times is mentioned. (You and the Times seem to have issues I don't fully understand.) We can certainly agree on Clive Owen, and on his performance in Closer, although I'm not sure you can be considered underrated when you've been nominated for an Oscar. We can also agree on Chris's witty and insightful reviews, which I think are outstanding -- and not just because they so clearly and convincingly articulate what I happen to think most of the time. A buddy actually got me to see this movie tonight, and Chris's take on the substance is right on. Still, a more hostile tone would have better captured my reaction. A few phrases from other reviews summed it up for me: "genuinely cruddy and hollow and, yes, vile"; "Really, this thing is pretty rank"; "'yuk' married to 'huh?'"; "Witless, soulless, heartless movie that mistakes noise for bravura and tastelessness for wit"; and, of course, "worthless piece of garbage." It's also incredibly boring. It turns out that tossing the dramatic elements of plot, dialogue, suspense, and character out the window actually makes your movie pretty tedious. Genre doesn't make a difference. You still need some reason to give a shit. As tantalizing as the concept of Monica Belluci as a lactating prostitute may be, it just wasn't enough.

- jhildner

September 8, 2007 at 2:16am

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Dr. Johnson: "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself."

- teplukhin

September 8, 2007 at 11:28am

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...for the typically smart (and exceptionally kind, if that's not a contradiction) comments, guys. And while I hated Closer--or, rather, thought it was unintentionally rather hilarious--I *loved* Clive Owen in it. Here's a link for anyone interested: http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w050328&s=orr032905

- chrisorr

September 8, 2007 at 6:31pm

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ratner: To my great good fortune (and ongoing astonishment) I'm married to Michelle Cottle. samw: No, I'm not (to the best of my knowledge) in any way related to the actor from The Mighty Ducks. I leave it to you whether this constitutes a boast or confession.

- chrisorr

September 8, 2007 at 11:31pm

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fwiw I thought Closer was a hoot. Natalie was pudgy-goofy-funny but Julia was (intentionally?) repulsive, esp in her pottymouth scenes. And no Englishman would pun on Babe Ruth's moniker as Jude Law's character does in his online sallies.

- teplukhin

September 10, 2007 at 12:41pm

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