Movie Review: Shoot 'Em Up

The new film Shoot 'Em Up has all the hallmarks we have come to expect from a Merchant Ivory production: exquisite locations, tasteful design, intelligent people having deep conversations in quiet rooms and always, always, a tuxedo-clad servant with sherry at the ready. Clive Owen plays a repressed actuary and Monica Bellucci a blind nun who must deliver an infant to a Venetian boarding school/orphanagerie run by Paul Giamatti, all of whom learn many quiet, profound lessons along the way.

Of course if I had any sense I would just stop there since the truth is Shoot 'Em Up (interestingly not a Merchant Ivory production) is the sort of film that completely defies review. It's like trying to review a Ho-Ho. Are you going to complain that the cake was a little dry and the "chalklate™" coating was a bit plasticine for your taste? You just paid money to eat a Ho-Ho, fer crissake. When Clive Owen, aka Mr. Smith, begins killing people with vegetables approximately forty-nine seconds into the film, you make a choice. You either say, "You totally can't do that with a carrot!" in which case, really, just leave, or else you say, "Oh, it's like that then," and enjoy yourself.

There is so little plot I hesitate to describe it for fear of spoiling what little mystery there is, but I will do my best. Clive Owen, a mysterious man with an affinity for guns, kind of like MacGyver if MacGyver spent less time at the Boys and Girls Club and more time drinking, finds himself in possession of a newborn baby after the mother inconveniently delivers said baby in the midst of a gun battle. Mr. Smith does the only logical thing, which is to search out a prostitute of his acquaintance, for specific reasons I will allow the movie to reveal, but mostly because it is a universally acknowledged film truth that prostitutes make the best caretakers for lost children.

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Article Author: Kati Irons

I am a film and music librarian for a public library system. Like many of my kind, I suffer from RKS, or Random Knowledge Syndrome. These musings are the inevitable end result of that condition.

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    Sep 17, 2007 at 4:52 am

    Dude, a capybara is sort of a huge rat ... i think you mean capoeira :))

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