Viewers familiar with the works of Quentin Tarantino (especially Kill Bill) and John Woo (notably Hard-Boiled, I’ve discovered in my research) should be unsurprised by the gratuitous nature of Michael Davis’ epically gruesome Shoot ‘em Up. In the span of 87 minutes, Clive Owen’s mysterious Mr. Smith character kills scores of villains and delivers dozens of terribly cliché one-liners. The violence and humor does little to glaze over the stunted acting and a plot thinner than a filleted tomato skin, but coherence seems to matter little in this quick, gloriously gory romp.

At the beginning of the movie, Smith encounters a woman in labor who is running from a series of shooters led by an unhinged reprobate named Hertz (Paul Giamatti). He follows her to an alley, where he delivers the baby and dispenses of the baddies before the mother dies. Smith figures out that the baby was the important target, and, the protector of a strange set of virtues considering the carnage he casually engages in – he runs a guy off the road who doesn’t use his turn signal when switching lanes, for instance – takes it upon himself to protect the infant, enlisting the help of a lactating prostitute (Monica Bellucci).

As the movie progresses, Smith finds out that the baby is part of a bone marrow harvesting experiment, and Hertz is part of a group of hired hands sent to stop it. But the finer details of the plot are secondary to the mannerisms of the two main men. A grown-up version of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, Smith and Hertz exchange increasingly hackneyed barbs, fight with comically large and small weapons, and barely escape each other’s grasps. Smith even munches on (and kills people with) carrots the entire movie and Hertz’s cell phone rings “Ride of the Valkyries” (a.k.a. “Kill the Wabbit”) for good measure.

With questionable morals and a definite affinity for the genre, including the bad acting that goes along with it – Bellucci puts on the same broken accent that Selma Hayek used in Dogma – Shoot ‘Em Up banks a great deal on a principle that Giamatti vocalizes: violence is a hell of a lot of fun to watch. The same truth was behind Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and this movie is neither as smart or funny as its 2005 counterpart. But for sheer chutzpah in what it is able to, Shoot ‘Em Up is a useful distraction and should win fans already enamored with genre movies.

Rating: * * * of 5

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