Shoot 'Em clicks

With a short 87 minute running time, Shoot 'Em Up never slows in the hyper-kinetic display of "ultra-violence" that permeates the entire film. From the opening scene until the final frame, the film treats the viewer to a constant barrage of shootouts and gun-battles, in which 99% of the people on screen die in a pool of computer generated blood. The trailer for this film wasn't misleading when it showed gunshot after gunshot, interspersed with cheesy one-liners that, in any other movie, would make the audience cringe. The action requires an immense suspension of disbelief, and the dark humor might seem grotesque and annoying to some viewers.

Shoot 'Em Up begins with Mr. Smith, played with dry humor by Clive Owen, sitting at a bus stop enjoying a carrot. The film spends no time on character development, but instead dives straight into the action, as a pregnant woman walks by while being chased by a reckless henchman. Unable to ignore the woman's impending doom, Mr. Smith disposes of the hit man in a very graphic, yet creative way -- with the use of his carrot. After protecting the unnamed woman against numerous other pistol-wielding bad guys, Mr. Smith delivers her baby only to have the mother die shortly after.

Having little choice, Mr. Smith escapes with the baby and brings it to the only person who he thinks can help: a "lactation prostitute" (Monica Bellucci) who can supply the baby with food. As the story develops, the two main characters become a twisted version of surrogate parents.

Hot on the trail of Mr. Smith and family, Hertz, played wonderfully over the top by Paul Giamatti, acts as the lead hit man. Hertz, however, is not beyond the troubles of family life, as he receives constant phone calls from his wife, who interrupts him at the most inopportune times.

The plot quickly becomes convoluted, with character back stories and government conspiracies that subtly make fun of the action genre.

Despite the fact that most of the mysteries are revealed by the end of the movie, it is of little consequence, as they merely provide a means to an end, with that end being obscene amounts of action.

Like last year's Crank, Shoot 'Em Up takes every action set-piece and every bit of dialogue to the extreme, the main difference being the one area where Crank failed and Shoot 'Em Up succeeds: direction.

Treating the film like a comic book or graphic novel, Michael Davis fills the frames of his directorial debut with varying shades of dark colors, allowing for the natural emphasis of brighter colors when they display on the screen (the glimmer in a pool of blood, the color of a car, the outfit worn by a particular woman). Although it might seem to mimic the shooting style of Sin City, the fact that Shoot 'Em Up was not filmed entirely on green screen gives it a completely different feel.

Much of the appeal of Shoot 'Em Up lies in the periodic instances of humor that are present throughout the film. Mr. Smith has a strange fascination with carrots, which he constantly eats and uses as weapons. He is a man who hates almost everything, from a driver who fails to use his blinker while signaling a lane change to a man slowly slurping a cup of coffee, and Mr. Smith doesn't restrain this hatred. Instead, he expresses it the only way he knows how -- through unmitigated violence.

One of the few slight drawbacks in Shoot 'Em Up is also one that has plagued many recent action films. The editing of the action scenes provides the viewer with an onslaught of quick cuts that sometimes detract from the scenes and make it difficult to watch the more entertaining moments on screen.

Furthermore, by the end of the film, the quick one-line quips given by the main characters become slightly tiresome, and their cheesiness is no longer as appealing as in the first half of the movie.

In a movie that revels in its ridiculousness, Michael Davis' Shoot 'Em Up provides the audience with a brief escape from reality that people will either thoroughly enjoy or absolutely hate.