Musings of a Punk Rock Father

I haven't been paying much attention to the movies that are out right now. And so when Melanie and I decided at the last minute yesterday that we wanted to go on a date, we weren't making a very informed decision regarding what movie to go see. We quickly pulled up the theatre schedule, and went through the list of movies. "Balls of Fury," "Rush Hour 3," Rob Zombie's "Halloween," "The Nanny Diaries"...ugh. And then I looked up "3:10 to Yuma." I read the first line of the synopsis; "When a rancher..." and I didn't want to go any further. I had visions of Van Damme and Seagal running through my head. But then we saw that it starred Russell Crowe, so we decided we would give it a chance. Reviews be darned, we would just go.

At the theatre, we discovered the movie had already started. I refuse to miss even the first two minutes of a film, because those two minutes can be crucial. So we went back to the box office to exchange our tickets. The next movie playing was "Shoot Em Up." Never heard of it. Oh, it stars Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti? Okay, let's give it a shot. Actually, Melanie said let's give it a shot, because with a title like "Shoot Em Up," I assumed it was a brainless, plotless action movie, which is the furthest thing from what Melanie likes. But, she picked it.

The movie opened with one of the most ridiculous scenes I have ever seen, in almost every regard. Gratuitous violence, questionable acting prowess, bad, bad dialogue, and more gratuitous violence. I won't attempt to describe what transpires in this opener, because plenty of critics have let the carrot out of the bag, except to say that I enjoyed the use of Nirvana's "School."

I continued to hate the film as crazy, over-the-top shoot-outs were strung together by a plot that existed solely to have a reason to string together crazy, over-the-top shoot-outs. It was either like an extended length music video or a musical. The plot, thin as it is, basically follows Owen as he saves a baby that is being followed by assassins, for reasons explained much, much later in the movie. He ends up on the run with a prostitute who becomes the surrogate mother to baby Oliver. But don't pay attention to the story, because the filmmaker certainly didn't. Some critics have compared this to John Woo, but it really doesn't have the grace of a lot of John Woo films. It reminds me more of "Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane." Immediately after the film, I thought it was like "Children of Men" meets "Sin City," and not just because Clive Owen appeared in all three, and then I saw that a lot of critics said the same thing.

But at some point in the film, I felt like I "got it." Somewhere in the ludicrous gun battles, barely witty repartee and pounding heavy metal (such as "Ace of Spades," which tends to be over-used, but it's such a good song I don't really mind), I started to see the real comedy of it all. I first tried to determine if the movie is a send-up of action films, or a bizarre anti-gun commentary; I finally concluded that it is both. It could be neither, I suppose, and I am reading too much into it. But it is so much, so far out there, that I have to believe the filmmaker had a little more thought put into it than is put into a Seagal movie. The film is quite self-referential, with Owen's character at one point complaining about an infuriating trait of a lot of action movie heroes, so he is sure to avoid their blunders. The seemingly poor acting and bad dialogue actually reminded me of "Wild Things," which was also purposely over-the-top.

Probably the biggest laugh for Melanie and me came at the most "climactic" scene. If and when you see this movie, you will know exactly what I am talking about. Another big laugh came when Owen and Bellucci were changing baby Oliver's newspaper diaper, and Owen looked at the poop-covered front page with a photo of a presidential candidate. "S**t," he uttered. Haha.

When we got home, we immediately looked the movie up online to find out what the deal is with it. Are we crazy for not only not hating it, but actually kind of liking it? I felt vindication in Roger Ebert's review:

"'Shoot 'em Up,' written and directed by the gung-ho Michael Davis, is the most audacious, implausible, cheerfully offensive, hyperactive action picture I've seen since, oh, 'Sin City,' which in comparison was a chamber drama. That I liked 'Shoot 'em Up' is a consequence of a critical quirk I sometimes notice: I may disapprove of a movie for going too far, and yet have a sneaky regard for a movie that goes much, much farther than merely too far."