Imagine That At The End Of Die Hard, Bruce Willis Made A Joke About Poop, Then Flew Away On A Jetpack
Because that's basically how I feel about Shoot 'Em Up.
The film has been called both an exhibition of "great style and wit" and "a worthless piece of garbage," and this might be the first time that I kind of agree with both reviewers.
Shoot 'Em Up relies not only on your ability to accept silly jokes and total absurdity, but also that you'll find both of these funny enough to allow them to fuel everything else. You've got to buy into it pretty completely or it's going to feel like a massive waste of time. I don't, which is why I'm not sure how to feel. Some of the movie is funny enough, and the action is certainly actiony enough.
The problem is that one truly insipid scene can utterly ruin any film if the viewer finds it awful enough, and for me, the skydiving scene in this film does just that. Whatever I might be inclined to respect about the over-the-top action elsewhere in Shoot 'Em Up, I was so embarrassed to be watching this one scene that I can't possibly be compelled to watch it again. But I'm a realist, so I can't condemn it; if ridiculousness is okay with you, then you might very well love this movie.
But come on. Look at this shit.
Owen and Giamatti are actually very good, and Monica Bellucci is incredibly annoying, which sort of summarizes the condition of this movie; it's not an average movie. It's by turns good and awful, so I'm just not sure what to say about it.
The New York Daily News summarized this film by comparing it to a series of Bond punchlines condensed into one script. The problem is that if you actually read Bond puns on paper, and think about them, you realize they're all terrible. You improvise better puns to get out of a speeding ticket than the Bond writers are capable of coming up with, and coming up with puns is most of what they do (or at least it was before they hired Daniel Craig to exterminate people with his steely gaze alone).
About ten seconds into Shoot 'Em Up, I was immediately convinced I was going to love the film. After that gag was repeated about a million goddamned times in increasingly idiotic ways, I began to suspect that perhaps I wasn't going to love the film. Some people certainly will appreciate it, and I can see why, but I am not one of them.
