Ramblings of Tungsten

Well I was going to write about how badass my new Kitchen Aid is but that will have to wait for another day (perhaps a day when I make some thing cool with it). You may be asking yourself why you have to wait to read about greatness of my industrial electric mixer. I will tell you why. Last night, I watched Shoot ‘Em Up.

From pretty much minute one Shoot ‘Em Up throwing enough lead in the air for two movies but that’s not all. Throughout the movie you get baby birthing gunfight, sex gunfight, skydiving gunfight, and what I can only describe as marionette gun battle. Oh, there is also one or two slightly more straight up gun fights. It is actually hard to gauge just how many gun fights there are in Shoot ‘Em Up because the whole movie is really one big Hong Kong style gun battle with some breaks for dialog and “plot” mixed in.

As far as the plot goes there is one in there somewhere but it is really just enough of one to explain why a hard boiled badass and a lactating whore are running around with a baby while killing hordes of red shirt bad guys and to warrant great set pieces like a gun manufacturer for a gun fight. Because what better place to get into a one man vs. a massive security force gun battle than the actual place where the guns being used are made?

Despite the general lack of a real plot, there are some subtle yet poignantly funny moments in the film as well. For instance there is a brief scene where we actually see the evil henchmen cleaning up their fallen comrades after the protagonist, Mr. Smith, handily laid them to waste. It isn’t something you see much in any action film with a high body count but when you think about it someone has to be cleaning up that mess. By and large the characters actually have some depth to them that is actually almost too much for the shallow story but they play it serious and through some confluence of ridiculousness it works.

When put to a standard rating system, Shoot ‘Em Up isn’t likely to hold water:

Plot:
Performance:
Effects:
Cinematography:
Editing:
Realism:
Sub-Overall:

But, if we consider some factors that represent what this movie is all about we get a much different picture:

Action:
Creative Gunplay:
Blood Spatter:
Comic Sense:
Cringe Moments:
Witty Dialog:
Sub-Overall:

So if you really care about the standard ratings and the genre specific ratings equally you get the following:
Overall:

For what it is I really liked this movie but I should qualify that I have a big man crush on Clive Owen and a huge crush on Monica Bellucci, and Paul Giamatti plays a good bad guy. It has some scenes that are worth watching over and over but once you’ve seen it all the way through I don’t know if there is any reason to watch the whole thing again.