DVD Tuesday: Sex, Violence, Endangered Baby: I love Shoot 'Em Up!
Clive Owen in Shoot 'Em Up courtesy New Line Cinema
DVD Tuesday: A girl, a gun, a baby and Clive Owen careen through this sly meta-action movie romp in an exhilarating hail of bullets
Writer-director Michael Davis' deliriously trashy mash-up of John Woo and Loony Toons was greeted by a mix of scathing denunciations and cluelessly slavering encomiums applauding its over-the-top excesses; rare was the reviewer who deigned to notice its sly, poignantly affectionate deconstruction of contemporary action-movie clichés.
Shoot 'Em Up tanked at the box office, but I suspect it's going to find its following on DVD, where each and every knowingly audacious frame can be frozen and savored.
An itinerant, carrot-chomping, down-on-his-luck man with no name (
Clive Owen) - come on, "Mr. Smith" is not a name - is waiting at a deserted big-city bus stop in the middle of a dark, dark night when a hugely pregnant woman waddles by with a gun-toting thug in hot pursuit.
Smith intervenes - you just
know he once knew someone like her, except that then there was no one there to help - and finds himself delivering the stranger's baby (of
course he cuts the placenta with a bullet) while fighting a pitched gun battle. Infant in hand, he stages a daring escape from sneering, sadistic head villain Hertz (
Paul Giamatti) who, it turns out, wasn't after the now-deceased woman: He wants the baby.
"Smith," who knows little about birthing babies and less about looking after them, makes a beeline for the most maternal person he knows: Donna (
Monica Belluci) - could that be as in
Ma-donna? - a lactating prostitute who caters to middle-aged "babies" with the big bucks to patronize super-specialized brothels.
With Donna onboard as wet nurse and occasional concubine, Smith sets about finding out why Hertz and his goons are so hell-bent on killing an infant, a quest that's consistently subordinated to ecstatically deranged action sequences: The naked Smith fighting off an army of gun-toting mercenaries while making love to Donna (and you thought
you could multitask); Smith improvising a series of Rube Goldberg-esque booby traps at a gun warehouse owned by pervy firearms magnate Hammerstein (the gauntly seductive Stephen McHattie, once first in line to replace Robert Englund as Freddie Krueger in the
Nightmare on Elm Street series); Smith sliding down a conveyer belt, baby in one hand, blazing pistol in the other.
Davis' influences are clear:
Sergio Leone Westerns; John Woo's
Hard-Boiled (1992), whose iconic centerpiece involves brutal cop Chow Yun Fat with a chubby-cheeked infant on his hip; Warner Bros. animator
Chuck Jones' Bugs Bunny and Roadrunner vs. Coyote cartoons - Hertz's "Ride of the Valkyries" cell-phone ring isn't an homage to
Apocalypse Now, it's referencing the classic cartoon
What's Opera, Doc, featuring none other than Bugs and his perpetual nemesis Elmer Fudd.
It should come as no surprise that Davis sold
Shoot 'Em Up on the strength of an animated version of one of the film's balletic gunfights.
But the wonder of
Shoot 'Em Up is its willingness to transgress without being mean - it's not torture porn, but it's also not a brainless imitation of weightless video-game excesses. Writer-director Davis, whose unpromising previous credits range from direct-to-video teen sex comedies (
Eight Days a Week,
Girl Fever) to kiddie pix like
Prehysteria! 3, somehow synthesized every action-movie cliché into an über-action film that simultaneously plays it so straight it's darkly funny and cuts straight to the overworked genre's heart.
Things to Consider:
What's the difference between spoof and homage to a familiar genre? Examples?
Is it possible to love a particular genre - horror, romantic comedy, Western - while fully acknowledging its clichés and flaws? How?
Why do smart, sophisticated moviegoers who like to be challenged also love genre movies?
Send your movie questions to
FlickChick.
Hear Maitland on the weekly podcast
TV Guide Talk.
See Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this week's new flicks on the
Movie Talk
vodcast.
Previously in DVD Tuesday:
Freeway
A Mighty Wind
It's a Wonderful Life
Waitress
Laura
Cop
All About Eve
Severance
Sweet Smell of Success
Daughters of Darkness
The Crazies
Blade Runner
Zodiac
Manhunter
A Simple Plan
Taxi Driver
Renaissance
Blowup
Hot Fuzz
300
Ace in the Hole
Eyes Without a Face
Apocalypto
Citizen Kane
La Jetée
Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)
Bob le Flambeur
Near Dark
Perfect Blue
Pan's Labyrinth
Les Girls
The Girl Who Knew Too Much
The Queen
Expresso Bongo
I'm Not Scared
Shocking Grindhouse Double Bill! - Scanners and The Candy Snatchers
Don't Look Now
Re-Animator
Casino Royale
Pi
The Prestige
13 Tzameti
The Departed
Suspiria
Kiss and Make Up
Kiss Me Deadly
The Long Good Friday
What Alice Found
The Devil's Backbone
The Descent
The Devil Wears Prada
Pandora's Box
The Thief and the Cobbler
Nashville
Panic in the Streets/Jack Palance Interview
The Pusher Trilogy
Scarface
Slither
Sunset Blvd.
In Cold Blood
Brick
