Shoot 'Em Up (Michael Davis, 2007)

[grungies]

I choose not to avoid it, because you sound like A.O. Scott's review, and A.O. Scott is a hack.

More than fair: I went in wanting to enjoy it 100%: I don't know what turned me off so violently towards it (everything about the concept, the humor, etc sounded extremely appealing)...many seem to like it, so I'm surely a dolt. I hope you get more out of it than I did. I hide my face in shame for aligning myself with A.O. Scott: whatever penance I can do will surely never wash THAT bilious stain from my flesh. #-o

That's okay, we've all been there. I once agreed with him on 28 Weeks Later

[Cronenfly]

I think part of my problem was going in expecting (for whatever reason) Domino (though even, say, Crank would have been more than sufficient): THAT was a grand, glorious, but (crucially, and the area in which Shoot 'Em Up fails) strangely pokerfaced mess that made all the wrong decisions seem so very right, where they're just so banal, careless (though maybe that's only an illusion...) and rehashed in SEU that I couldn't get up the effort to care, which disappoints me, because in theory it sounds so awesome. I promise I will complain no more about it: thanks for the understanding, grungies.
EDIT- My God: IMDB is a doghouse on this (although I suppose that's their usual batting average for even remotely intelligent discussion). Makes me feel lucky to have this forum.

[Hrossa]

I found the pro-gun/anti-gun dichotomy of this to be really interesting. I mean, the crux of the film seems to be gun control. That's what everyone's up in arms about (pun intended). So is the "take home" supposed to be that we want the guns in the right (preferably carrot-powered) hands?

There also seems to be a lot of thought put into the correlation between evil people and cell phones. All of the villains, at least the important ones, talk on their cell phones pretty constantly.

I thought the hippy bus line that Monica Belucci uses was a great idea.

I also liked

Spoiler

the way that their makeshift family unit gelled so quickly. In no time at all they've named the baby Oliver and Monica is talking to the baby about his "daddy".

[Cronenfly]

Those are probably some of the best aspects of the movie: many of its subtleties work far better than the film as a whole, IMO.

[Antoine Doinel]

I went to see this last night, and Cronenfly I agree with everything you've said on the movie. I too wanted to love this but, after the spanking scene my girlfriend and I got up and left; this is only the second movie I've ever walked out on in my life (and I love Clive Owen).

What a stupid, forced, unfunny and unironic piece of garbage. This isn't even a matter of leaving your brain at the door but poor writing coupled with thoroughly average action sequences (I have no idea what the hype behind Michael Davis' birth shootout - or anything other sequence - was all about now that I've seen it). Watching this was like going under a full-on lobotomy. If you removed the amazing talent from the cast, you would have a film that - if it even got made - would've gone straight to video. Every hand was played so obviously that it made films like Crank or The Transporter seem like masterpieces of subtlety and wit. Moreover, the entire "relationship" sequence preceding the sex scene shootout was ridiculously out of place and laughably terrible.

And damn, do you think they at least could've invested in better supporting actors who didn't sound like they were reading their lines off of cue cards? Or better yet, a better stunt baby that didn't look like a Cabbage Patch Doll? My girlfriend and I were laughing during the scenes when Owen was running with such an obviously plastic baby under his arms.

Easily one of the worst movies I've seen in ages.

[Cronenfly]

Thanks for the support, Antoine: I was beginning to think that either I or everyone else had gone insane (as my progressingly softening comments towards the film indicate, I was caving in the face of lunacy). I too cannot figure out now where any of the hype was coming from (birth sequence shootout and all the rest): I think that part of it was that the trailers showed definite promise that the film didn't just not deliver on, but stamped so far into the ground that it soiled how I see everyone of note who was involved in the movie (Owen, perhaps because it was the hardest fall, in particular).
EDIT- I also admire your decision to walk out: It's the smartest decision I never made, and I, too (as my masochism in sitting through Shoot 'Em Up here shows), never walk out. Just out of curiousity, what's your one other walk out?

[domino harvey]

We should really make a new thread about walk-outs because as someone who has a strict never-walk-out policy, I'd love to live vicariously through the actions of others.

[Antoine Doinel]

EDIT- I also admire your decision to walk out: It's the smartest decision I never made, and I, too (as my masochism in sitting through Shoot 'Em Up here shows), never walk out. Just out of curiousity, what's your one other walk out?

I believe the other film I walked out on was the abysmal Party Monster (I'm not even sure why I went in the first place). I had also once gone with a friend to a screening of Dune and wanted desperately to walk out of that one but out of solidarity stayed for my friend. We both got a good laugh afterword when he told me he would have gladly walked out as well. Oddly enough, it was his girlfriend at the time who forced me to stay with her for the remainder of The Phantom Menace when the reel snapped during the screening we attended. I had no desire to wait for the reel to be fixed and didn't really care to see how the film ended, but did anyway.

[portnoy]

A movie that only grows in my esteem with every passing day.

The gonzo lovechild of Paul Verhoeven and Lloyd Kaufman - simply vile action in service of vicious satire of gun culture and Americanism. I think it's just about the most ironic action film I've ever seen - a huge fuck-you to the type of people who would go see a movie called Shoot Em Up, even while it provides insanely, entertainingly overwrought action that's only slightly more parodic than the type you can find in modern-day intensified-continuity action flicks.