How do I describe this movie? Well…Shoot ‘Em Up is an ultraviolent comic thriller. Is this your kind of movie? Take this quick quiz:

You’re an incredibly agile, fast-thinking, quick shooting assassin. You’ve found the headquarters of the bad guys who’ve sent approximately 258 guys after you, all of whom you’ve killed and they haven’t put a mark on you. And there, right in your sights, are the head honcho and his main assistant, easily within reach of any of the 73 guns you have stashed on your person. Do you:

1. Kill the two main bad guys and take your chances at escaping?
2. Gather evidence to prove how awful these two are and hope to God that you can get your evidence in front of, say, a Congressional inquiry, or
3. Set up elaborate traps all over the headquarters involving automatic weapons operated by pull cords made of twine?

If you answered 3, then Shoot ‘Em Up is the movie for you. It’s a Hong Kong action movie starring white guys in an unnamed North American city, with bags and bags of guns.

I have a visceral reaction to a lot of the sadism in action movies and I wince a lot during the extended scenes of violence. I also can’t stand children in danger. Despite those two things, I thought this movie was hilarious. It is so over the top you can’t take any of it seriously. For example: the old cliché about the good guy hitting every target he aims for and the bad guys not being able to hit the side of a bus with an automatic is taken to new heights in this movie. The main character’s leather jacket never suffers so much as a scratch while he’s leaping through windows and showing us exactly how to ensure you’re thrown clear of a car accident. (Hint: it involves shooting a lot of guns.)

Clive Owen, the thinking man’s Jason Statham¹, lays waste to endless waves of bad guys. He delivers babies while shooting up the place. He lovingly tucks the baby he ends up guarding in a bullet-proof vest while shooting about 75 guys who are after them. In one completely hysterical scene, he manages to dispatch about 15 masked Uzi-wielding gunmen while he’s buck naked and… well, you just kinda have to see it to believe it. As my father-in-law said as we left the theater, the editor on this flick must have had a ball when he had to go to work every day.

I’m not sure you absolutely need to catch this one in the theater, but I think it’s fun and worth at least putting in your Netflix queue. This movie gives you exactly what it promises you in the title. I almost wish it hadn’t worked in so much damn backstory: we don’t care why Clive is the Energizer Bunny of Death. He chomps a lot of carrots (in close-up even) and tosses off a lot of really groan-worthy one-liners. When you have chase scenes like the one at the end of Act Two — trust me, you’ll know the one I mean — you don’t need any freakin’ backstory.

——–
¹ Alas, I can’t take credit for this quip. It’s Darin’s.

I hated this movie. So, just in case you think the praise is universal: tisn’t. At 10 minutes in, I considered walking out; at 45 minutes in, I actually asked Darin if I could go meet him in the bookstore later on, and he asked me to just hold on for a little bit. Which I did. Next time: bookstore.

I disliked one of the main characters. I hated the plot. I hated the resolution. I liked bits with the cops…but they went on forever, until they’d definitely worn out their welcome. I liked Michael Cera (the tall lanky one, from Arrested Development) — that kid has quite a future ahead of him, but the rest of the movie was ugly enough to make me want to throw something at the screen. The guys who wrote this movie (who are, like the main characters, named “Seth” and “Evan”) clearly hate and/or fear women. Women solely as fuck objects evidently starts early and for some guys never, ever changes, especially when they get in a position to make a damn movie.

I told Darin that if this movie bears any relationship to the real world, I’ve moved past wanting to home school them and will probably just smother them now, to avoid the pain.

As Darin and I walked out of the theater, I said, “Were you doing the same thing I was doing? Working out the changes for the American version?”

“Doing that probably made it a lot more fun to watch.”

We spent dinner discussing our rewrite.

While The Valet has gotten really excellent reviews, it’s not that great a movie. It’s very straightforward — there are absolutely no wasted bits in the movie. But it’s intensely superficial and obvious and the jokes weren’t all that good. So I’d have to say: Pass.