Shoot 'Em Up

There are 85 deaths in Shoot ‘Em Up. As you can guess, most people are shot. One is taken out by a filing cabinet. Another comes a cropper on top of a chopper. And two are killed with carrots. That’s right, doc - carrots.

The lethal vegetables are the favourite snack of ‘Smith’ (Owen), an enigmatic killing machine who is minding his own business when... bang! Suddenly he’s delivering a baby while holding off an armed-to-the-teeth mob and their deeply unpleasant leader Hertz (Giamatti).

The mother doesn’t make it. Which leaves Smith holding the baby and Hertz with a job to finish.

Fortunately, Smith is able to, er, milk the maternal instincts of luscious prostitute Donna Quintano (Bellucci). But there’s not much time for their unplanned family to bond. Hertz is breathing down their necks with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of goons.

Having plundered John Woo’s action classic Hard-Boiled for the opening scene (which he freely acknowledges), writer-director Davis - a former storyboard artist - is quick to make his cartoon and comic-book connections too.

If Owen’s cool-under-fire, carrot-chomping hero is Bugs Bunny, Hertz is Elmer Fudd gone postal.

Giamatti portrays the morally bankrupt sleazebag with infanticidal, finger-breaking glee, though his dialogue veers from witty to juvenile. But if the one-liners are hit-and-miss, the character quirks generally work.

Smith, unflappable in the face of death, loses it with bad drivers and people who slurp their drinks. Hertz has a wife who invariably calls at the most inconvenient times. A Fed has a gun-cleaning obsession. The baby is only comforted by heavy metal.

The plot - some rigmarole about bone marrow harvesting and gun lobbyists - is simply there to give Davis a new playground for each shootout. The result is a salvo of action sequences that are as audacious and inventive as they are entertaining.

It makes Crank look positively sedate. Bullets through umbilical cords, shootouts during sex and gunfights in gun factories: this is one movie that does exactly what it says on the tin. And then some.

One great sight gag has Smith and Hertz swapping insults by shooting various letters out of a neon sign; a car chase provides a compelling argument for not wearing a seatbelt, and there’s a remarkably literal demonstration of the term ‘handgun’.

All the ammunition you’ll need to blow away those boredom blues.

Elliott Noble