Shoot 'Em Up

Stars: Clive Owen, Monica Bellucci, Paul Giamatti, Stephen McHattie, Daniel Pilon, Greg Bryk

Director: Michael Davis

Very much in the style of, but even more outrageous than Crank, this all-action-comedy is like a video game gone so far over the top as to disappear down the other side, with a designer-stubbled Owen proving himself the deadliest nanny since Bette Davis as he fights to protect the new-born baby he has just delivered in a gunfight. A bullet cuts the umbilical cord, another dispatches the mother and one villain is dispatched with a raw carrot. Don't ask.

From then on, it's one chase and non-PC action scene after another. Go with the flow or leave the cinema. What was it Bruce Willis said about the villain running out of bad guys in Die Hard 4.0? No chance of that here - the body count must run well into three figures.

Plot? Not a lot. Chief nasty Giamatti (who seems to have decided to go to the bad since his experience in Lady in the Water) has been hired by corrupt senator Pilon to go after infants for reasons too ridiculous to discuss. In any case, Owen will put paid to all that, getting any desire to play James Bond out of his system as he has one gun battle while having sex and caps another by plunging from a plane and spewing out a few more bullets before opening his parachute.

Tact? Finesse? Forget 'em. If the Farrelly Brothers had made an action-comedy, this is probably pretty close to what it would look like.

David Quinlan

USA 2007. UK Distributor: Entertainment. Colour by deluxe.
86 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 18.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 2, Violence/Horror 2, Drugs 1, Swearing 2.

Review date: 15 Sep 2007