If you go into Shoot ‘Em Up expecting anything resembling intelligence, you’re coming away confused as to the appeal. This is a parody of the stupid action movies fans love, taken to the most ridiculous, absurd degree possible. You can’t find anything dumber, though you’ll have hard time finding something more entertaining.

Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti star in this brain dead actioner, both delivering hilariously terrible one-liners you typically get once per mega-budget summer movie. Giamatti is the villain Hertz. The plot is as stupid as the action, dealing with a gun control crazy senator who kills babies for bone marrow so he can fight cancer and a gun company looking to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Uh huh.

Shoot ‘Em Up is the type of movie that doesn’t even need a narrative. It has a gun fight while a guy has hot sex with Monica Bellucci. It has a guy diving out of an airplane whole shooting 20 or so bad guys leaping at him. This is a movie where a man shoots bullets with his fingers.

Everything is staged in a style that mimics the movies it so obviously loves. This is both a tribute and parody to the Hard Boileds and Last Action Heroes of the world. The characters are less developed than a Saturday morning cartoon, and act like they’re in one. You’ll never learn Clive Owen’s background because it would only distract from the action.

Aside from a brief period after the initial shootout (which occurs mere minutes into the film), there never comes a time where more than 10 minutes passes without a gunshot. Taking away the credits, this is a movie that barely breaks the 80 minute point. For at least 75% of it, it’s nothing but guns firing.

Shoot ‘Em Up is the type of movie that causes film purists to ignore Hollywood or turn their noses up at it. Their loss. This is the action movie that gets it right, with all the necessary ingredients that let you turn your brain off and simply enjoy the stupidity of it all.

Video quality here is all over the place. Early scenes have a murky, drab, off color look to them. Flesh tones are inconsistent, and the overall look is soft. Distant shots suffer greatly from compression artifacts. Up close, stunning detail reveals itself. The later you go into the film, the better it looks. The final shoot outs fare better than the opening ones.

DTS 6.1 ES and Dolby 5.1 EX lead a far too powerful sound charge. Bass here is simply absurd, over powering the otherwise spot-on sound field. Everything is delivered with room-shaking bass, and it becomes an annoyance as it covers the extensive surround work. Glass breaking, bullets ricocheting, and cars zooming through the sound field are all apparent if you can hear it.

A nicely rounded set of extras compliment this box office disappointment. A loaded commentary by director Michael Davis covers some material housed in other supplements, but provides enough to stand on its own.