Shoot 'Em Up (2007)

I love action movies, even, to some extent, the really dumb ones. They're candy for my brain, thoroughly implausible, full of bright colors, explosions, and requiring no thought whatsoever. They're fun, and for me, entertainment is what movies should be about. So I was more than happy to sit down with Dustin and Jess over the weekend and watch Shoot 'Em Up

I figured it would be a run-of-the-mill action flick. The title said it all, right? Clive Owen would run around shooting people, save the girl, and live happily ever after. I had no idea the concentrated awesome I was to encounter, or how uproariously over-the top the action would be. I thought I'd seen pretty much everything this genre could bring to the table. It didn't take long before I was proven very wrong.

Shoot 'Em Up reminded us all a whole lot of Crank, so much so that we finally looked up to confirm that it wasn't actually made by the same people. Like Crank, it tried to distill the action movie genre down to its concentrated essence, and succeeds nearly as well. It has a few more slower segments that prompted us to make comments like "the movie is dying, shoot something!" Most of those were plot expositions, which are basically unnecessary in these films. Crank had a vestigial plot that was explained in the first moments of the movie, and barely referenced during the ensuing action. Shoot 'Em Up, on the other hand, hearkens back to the wildly and needlessly complicated plots of the action flicks of my youth. But it more than makes up for being slower with abject insanity. As I said, the plot's complexity at times defies comprehension. It starts out with a carrot-chomping good Samaritan (who turns out to be an expert marksman) stepping up to help a pregnant woman who is being chased. Before you know it, he's on the run with a newborn infant, chased by a sociopathic assassin and his merry band of expendable goons. Hilarity ensues, leading to a gun manufacturer, a senator big on gun control, and a breeding program to provide infant bone marrow donors. Stated like that, it kind of sounds like a stupid mish-mash of idiotic plot points, all shoe-horned in between action sequences. And that's pretty much what it is, I suppose, but it's also wildly fun. Like Snakes on a Plane, the title says it all. Mythbusters could do an entire season just on this movie. They've already covered the easy stuff, like sparking bullets. But they need to do segments on the following:

• Can you really cut the umbilical cord with a gunshot without killing the baby?
• Can you really kill a man by shoving a carrot into his mouth and out the back of his skull?
• Is there an automotive lubricant that will allow you to slide 50 feet across a garage floor?
• Can you activate a thumbprint-recognition safety on a gun with a severed thumb?
• Can you control a series of guns zip-tied to various surfaces with a Rube Goldberg contraption of strings?
• How many infants are necessary to provide an adult with a bone-marrow transplant?
• Three words: Sky Diving Gunfight!

And that just scratches the surface of the insanity. Even better, some of the decisions the characters make are beyond belief. If I suddenly and unexpectedly had a newborn in my care, my first thought would be to get to the nearest Wal-Mart to get diapers and formal and some baby clothes. Clive Owen's character swaddles the boy instead in his stocking hat, and the child slowly accretes additional clothing in the form of a dirty sock for a hat, followed by diapers made from newspaper, a flak jacket, and an army surplus backpack for a carrier. Rather than find some formula and/or dropping the child off at the nearest hospital or church, he goes directly to a lactating prostitute and tries to hand him off to her. And as astounding as his characters decision-making is, the assassin chasing him has the Sherlock Holmesian ability to follow the same path and catch up. Despite all of the mind-boggling implausibility, I highly recommend this movie if you're the type to enjoy Crank. It's completely crazy and all kinds of fun to watch. I give it negative 0.5 Bolls, just shy of Crank's score since it was a bit slower. Check out the trailer, which merely scratches the surface:

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlx4n_ibNZE]

Technorati Tags: Movie Reviews