Shoot 'em Up is a cartoon, as deadpan a parody as you'll ever see. Anyone who claims to find any significance to this movie beyond sheer adrenal rush is lying. It really doesn't even have scenes, just one long extended battle with breaks to take a deep breath and (infrequently) reload. It's like half of a good John Woo movie.
What elevates Shoot 'em Up is the presence of Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti as the antagonists. If either of them so much as blinks or grins, the movie will collapse into tiresome, self-congratulatory dreck. Neither of them blink. Owen plays this movie just as straight as he did Children of Men and Giamatti brings as much effort to this project as he did to Sideways and American Splendor. Throw in Monica Belluci as a hooker (Riiiiight; hookers look like Belucci) with a clientele of breast-milk fetishists (are you grinning yet?) and you should know by now whether this is a movie you want to see or not. I personally thought it was one hour and 27 minutes of hoot.
Shoot 'em Up reminded me of The Replacement Killers, Antoine Fuqua's 1999 movie starring Chow Yun-Fat and Mira Sorvino. Chow may have gotten better reviews for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but he will never look more iconic than he did striding through Fuqua's film in a long black leather duster with a 9mm in each hand. He has never found an American vehicle worthy of him, but Chow Yun-Fat is the coolest man in the movies. His sheer magnetism makes a cliche story that's basically a pastiche of John Woo not only watchable, but fun.
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