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'Shoot 'Em Up' an over-the-top spoof on action films
By Zach Jenks
September 20, 2007 | OK, so action films are meant
to be over-the-top. But that doesn't stop coked-up executive
producers from concocting seriously absurd action movies.
Such is the case for the movie Shoot 'Em Up.
Last Sabbath, my father and I went to see this ultra-violent
movie instead of going to church to worship Jesus. In
his place, we decided to bask in the panoramic silver
screen of a 20-foot head of Clive Owen and the 15-foot-wide
grill of Paul Giamatti.
The point of the movie was to save a newborn baby
whose bone marrow could save the next president of the
United States. Because of his supposed adamant stance
on gun control, the immoral, money-crazed gun corporation
was the evil extreme in this classic dichotomy of this
action film as they try to kill the baby. Our hero is
a carrot-crazed, ex-black ops soldier who takes matters
into his own hands. Bullets fly. Nameless bad guys get
killed in comical and unusual ways. Who knew someone
can be brutally murdered by being stabbed in the eye
with a carrot?
If a person were to take this seriously, then they
would have walked out 20 minutes into the flick (As
an elderly couple did while I was watching. Really,
I don't know if it was from the hyena that applauded
after every over-blown death, or the movie). This movie
is obviously a spoof. If not, then why was it made?
Did the hero's copulation scene with overdubbed woman
moans while swarms of heavily armed villains getting
shot once and drop dead seem like a genius idea? Well
. . . to give it credit, it was original. So if it was
a spoof of the condition of the action movie, then what
was it spoofing.
Seriously, this movie wasn't meant to blow people's
minds with the plot twist. The twist comes when the
Democratic nominee for president sides with the bad
guys, which tries to shake up the audience, but it really
causes the point of the movie to be lost entirely. Why
do the bad guys still want to kill the baby? This movie
must be to the action genre what Scream was
to the slasher genre. But this can be wrong since there
are no references to other action flicks.
Of course, in Shoot 'Em Up, the main character
is a man's man. A Beowulf of modern times with a desire
for carrots and guns, yet he is also an anti-hero. He
has some good virtues, but he vindicates through vigilante
methods. He copulates with hookers, and feels no remorse
about killing hundreds of men without comprehending
the reasons. This all fits in the formula of the classic
action movie.
These include: stupid, weak, and easily killable villains
that are terrible gunmen, the hero gets the woman, prefers
his own company, a troubled past, mysterious, and such.
These are just a few attributes that a hero must have
in order to survive the nearly impossible odds.
Also, there needs to be over-the-top, death-defying
in which the protagonist must overcome calmly and coolly.
In this particular case, the hero jumps out of an airplane
while a dozen bad guys follow him in their descent towards
the earth. Their only purpose in the world of Shoot
'Em Up was to get shot and die in the air by Clive
Owen's 9mm pistol while the bad guys get over-killed
by getting shot and smash against the ground. Of course,
it boggles the mind when one thinks that someone can
be a good shot while skydiving while the air blows into
their face. Another situation was the sex scene in which
he shoots 'em up.
If this is meant to be an actual, serious movie, then
it's already been made by the Schwarzeneggers, the Stallones,
and the Charles Bronsons of the formulaic Hollywood
action genre. Whether it was serious or not, the sheer
absurdity of the wanton destruction, ideal anti-hero
masculinity, and mindless violence on nameless villains
that piled up ridiculously. The movie (as I said) was
ultra violent, but the gunplay scenes were creative
yet so far from reality that incited laughter rather
than awe of the explosive nature of the film as my response.
NW
MS
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