Shoot 'Em Up
FLICK Having just written about queasy-cam and ASL (average shot length) in my most recent posting it was difficult to avoid noticing them in Shoot 'Em Up, starring Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti. This fast-paced, non-stop action flick has got to have an ASL clocking in around one second. If anyone can count the number of shots fired during its 85 minute runtime, I’d like to know if was at least 1,000 because the average had to be more than 12 shots/minute.
Owen plays Smith, a carrot-chomping innocent bystander who gets involved delivering a newborn baby boy and then, after his mother dies, is on the run keeping him from being harmed by an endless number of hit men led by Hertz (Giamatti). Smith enlists a lactating prostitute (Monica Bellucci) to help him with the motherless child because he has to keep his pistol popping while momentarily stopping for a nourishing bite of a carrot. Why carrots? They’re good for any rascally rabbit’s eyesight. And that’s pretty much all we get to know about who Smith is. Character development is blasted to hell, as there is no time to stop and let us know who this guy is. Though any movie that uses a carrot as a deadly weapon and wraps a baby in a bulletproof vest instead of a blanket is going more for the playful and mischievous side of presenting violence, if there really is one. The whole reason for the baby chase involves a political plot point that’s a bit absurd. But the real problem in most movies like this one is finding humor in shooting off people’s body parts and blood spurting all over the screen.
Though the action scenes are like a ballistic ballet, director Michael Davis’ best move was in casting his two leads. Giamatti seems to be having fun as he snarls his lines, but Clive Owen keeps us involved with his quick-thinking tough guy by managing to project a thoughtfulness onto someone we really don’t get to know. With the national crime rate increasing perhaps you should hope that the next carrot-wielding baby-carrying bystander you see is really an anonymous hero. My Score: 6.5 out of 10.
