Stealth Entertainment

By Scott Lumley

July 24, 2008

If gunplay turns you on, this movie is going to make you pregnant with sextuplets.

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Hollywood is a machine. Every week, every month and every year countless films are released into theatres and not every one is as successful as the studio heads would hope. Sometimes the publicity machine was askew, sometimes the movie targeted an odd demographic, sometimes the release was steamrolled by a much larger movie and occasionally the movie is flat out bad.

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.




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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.


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