Stealth Entertainment
By Scott Lumley
July 24, 2008
BoxOfficeProphets.com
But Hollywood's loss is our gain. There is a veritable treasure trove of film out there that you may not have seen. I will be your guide to this veritable wilderness of unwatched film. It will be my job to steer you towards the action, adventure, drama and comedy that may have eluded you, and at the same time, steer you away from some truly unwatchable dreck.
Hopefully we'll stumble across some entertainment that may have slid under your radar. Wish us luck.
Shoot 'Em Up (2007)
Shoot 'Em Up looks like an exciting film. There's lots of gunplay, action and the occasional odd bit of sex. The movie stars Clive Owen as Smith, Paul Giamatti as Hertz and Monica Bellucci (Matrix Reloaded, Irreversible, and a surprising number of my daydreams...) as prostitute Donna Quintano. The film is, at the same time no less, an ultra violent action film, a treatise on gun control and an homage to Bugs Bunny. If you think those things go well together, I'd like you to try my new cocktail. It consists of single malt scotch and liverwurst blended with diesel fuel. We serve it over ice with a cherry on top. Enjoy!
I seriously don't know where to begin with this film, so I'm going to start with the things that made no sense, move onto the things that made me angry and then finish up with the stuff that left me physically nauseous. This may take a while. Get snacks.
The movie is based around the premise that a powerful and influential politician has a serious disease but is viewed as the only hope of a powerful political party. To survive long enough to force through changes that he wishes to make, his associates set up a 'baby factory' to produce three children from whom he can harvest the biological material he needs for a transplant and survive. Now doesn't that sound like every bugs bunny cartoon you ever saw? No?
The politician is opposed by political opponents in the gun lobby and they do their best to break up the baby factory operation the only way they know how, with lots and lots of violence and gunfire. A veritable army of murdering thugs converges on the location and bodies immediately begin piling up. And that is literally where the movie starts, with one lone, desperate and extremely pregnant woman frantically waddling away from the carnage and pursued by murderous idiots. She wanders by a bored looking Smith sitting on a bench by a bus stop, he decides to get involved and the movie starts rolling. Smith is apparently a badass supreme with a grudge against everyone and everything and he has very lethal skills to back up his convictions. Extremely well choreographed violence ensues, but it's all meaningless as it really just serves to introduce Smith to Wertz so that Smith can play Bugs to Wertz's Fudd.
A lot of reviewers made a big deal out of this little blip in the film, as to how this was an homage to Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. I've got news for you people. This was not homage. Unless homage consists of digging up Mel Blanc's corpse and sexually assaulting it for 90 minutes, I don't think this qualifies.
Then we can move on to the treatise on gun control. I'm going to put this bluntly, people. YOU CANNOT MAKE A MOVIE ABOUT GUN CONTROL IF YOU HAVE MULTIPLE GUN DEATH JOKES. It doesn't work. Anything you have to say gets washed away in the blood. And believe me, there is a lot of blood in this movie.
Finally, I'd like to take a moment and talk about the characters in this film. Two of the finest character actors of our generation have been saddled with two of the most one dimensional characters in screen history. They're both ridiculously talented, completely unyielding and utterly unlikable at the same time. Wertz is a relentless bastard to everyone and everything he meets. One moment he's leading his troops from the front, unafraid of getting shot, yet a few moments later he's literally shoving crap into one of his underlings faces. Smith is not one iota better, played as an angry, anti-gun special forces agent still grieving and raw over the death of his family. Yet he picks up guns without a moment's hesitation and executes people. He spouts one liners like Roger Moore in a cheesy .007 film while leaving a body count that rapidly rises into the hundreds in his wake. He completely overreacts to things that he sees, at one point running a discourteous litterbug off the road and into the back of a car. How are we supposed to cheer for this "hero"?
The most likable character in the whole film is actually Donna Quintano, the prostitute dragged into the middle of all this. She's really the only human character in the whole film worth caring about, and she calls things as she sees them. She deals with Smith like he's a force of nature in the beginning, taking very little crap from him. One of the few genuinely humorous moments in the whole film involves her disappearing off screen to make some money to buy something for a baby. And it's a perfect gift for this baby. This scene is completely genuine and almost touching and has one of the few jokes in this movie that really does work. It's unfortunate that it doesn't last, and you can practically see Monica surrender to the stupidity and violence about halfway through the film.
This film should have been great. Giamatti is a fine actor and we've all seen both Owen and Bellucci do incredible stuff on film before. The premise is interesting if convoluted, but the director and writer have mistaken choreographed violence for entertainment, and when that happens we're left with the cinematic equivalent of professional wrestling.
Actually, I take that back. I've seen some pretty good professional wrestling on occasion. This was a film with a $39 million dollar budget and Oscar nominees galore and they still managed to screw it up.
This is waste of film and your time. Go watch Wall-E or the Dark Knight. You'll thank me for it.