Awesome !! Pulp Fiction & Sin City Worthy !!!!
The embodiment of unflappable cool, Clive Owen calmly blows away an Army of Assassins in 'Shoot 'Em Up', a deliriously over-the-top exercise in Pulp Filmmaking that's a tongue-in-cheek homage to the cinema of John Woo.
Perversely funny and absurdly violent, Writer/Director Michael Davis' film is a hyper-stylized star vehicle for the effortlessly charismatic Owen; fresh from dodging bullets and mortar fire in the unjustly overlooked 'Children of Men' (2006). The roguishly handsome Brit holds the screen in 'Shoot 'Em Up' with his unwavering gaze as Mr. Smith, a one-man killing machine — and ferociously devoted babysitter.
Inspired by the Iconic Image of Chow Yun-Fat packing heat and a baby in Woo's 'Hard Boiled' (1992), 'Shoot 'Em Up' opens with Owen's carrot-chomping, lone wolf gunman reluctantly saving a pregnant woman from an assassin. When she inconveniently expires after giving birth, Smith finds himself protecting the infant, who's been marked for death by Hertz (Paul Giamatti), a former FBI profiler fielding long-distance calls from his clueless wife between gun battles.
Not exactly a warm and fuzzy father figure, Smith turns to bodacious prostitute Dona Quintana (Monica Bellucci), aka DQ, for help with the baby. Initially hostile to his pleas, DQ soon joins him on his bullet-splattered quest to discover why Hertz and his army of sharp-shooting goons are so determined to kill the baby boy Smith and DQ name Oliver (as in Dickens' Oliver Twist).
A former storyboard artist, Davis orchestrates the film's nearly wall-to-wall action sequences with breakneck precision and exhilarating verve — the more outrageous the mayhem, the better.
Although Davis pays tribute to Woo and Sergio Leone, among other directors, 'Shoot 'Em Up' often feels like a kinky, corpse-strewn riff on a classic Warner Bros. cartoon, peppered with sly jabs at American Gun Culture and "family values."
Never breaking a sweat, much less a smile, throughout all of 'Shoot 'Em Up', Owen is ideally cast as the misanthropic rogue gunman, living in a squat with only a trained rat for company/home security system. Against his better judgment and natural instincts, Smith develops an attachment to both DQ and Oliver, but Owen reveals his character's transformation so subtly, almost cryptically, that Smith never loses his edge. He finds an ideal adversary in Giamatti's Hertz, who looks more like a sad-sack office drone instead of a ruthless killer (Giamatti reportedly modeled his character's nondescript look on the infamous "BTK" Serial Killer).
As for Belluci (The Matrix Revolutions), Italy's reigning sex symbol is so lusciously beautiful as 'Shoot 'Em Up's' literal "Madonna/Whore" character, you can forgive her somewhat wobbly grasp of English.
A rollicking hoot from start to finish, 'Shoot 'Em Up' is the most satisfying, ultra-stylized action flick since 'Sin City' (2005).
Cannot Disappoint !!!! AWESOME !!!!Read full review
