The Cinema of the Four

Shoot ‘Em Up

A certain selection and discretion must be adhered to by any consulting movie investigator in laying his findings before the public. While there are those who would have one satisfy their every curiosity about such matters as “Balls of Fury,” innocents must be considered and some secrets are best left uncovered. On still other occasions, the movie detective finds that the case’s conclusion requires that certain facts be made public.

So it is for that unbelievable series of events that I observed this week under the title of “Shoot ‘Em Up.”

Recent weeks had presented Dr. Watson IV and I with a steady series of films that each seemed inspired by raw testosterone. Apparently, Hollywood had decided that late August marked the end of dating season, and that all femininity would be fleeing the theaters for weeks on end. Nowhere was that fact more apparent than the movie “Shoot ‘Em Up.”

Actor Clive Owen, who more than proved his action-movie mettle in “Sin City” and “Children of Men,” is once again defending women and babies, this time against frustrated criminal genius Paul Giamatti (best known for the somewhat repulsive “Sideways”). It’s a short film, clocking in much shorter than an hour and a half, but it doesn’t feel short in the slightest, being packed with as much manic action as any movie this year. Owen’s character “Smith” must do away with almost two hundred bad guys in that time, mostly with bullets, but occasionally choosing something on a par with Jason Voorhees. (There are two, count them, two deaths by carrot in this film . . . or perhaps more if you count . . . ah, but that is a matter best left for scholars.)

“Shoot ‘Em Up” lives up to its title, its preview, and all one’s hopes for a good “man” movie. Shoot-outs take place, keep taking place, hardly slowing down for such feminine concerns as childbirth and lovemaking (Smith, it seems, can deal with either while killing a dozen hired assassins). It’s not a movie for anyone who wants to see reality in their movies, or those easily offended by sex, death, rock and roll, or the completely gratuitous use of a certain swear word. If you enjoyed Owens previous outing in “Sin City,” however, this is a movie for you: an over-the-top, darkly comic, testosterone-fueled man-movie.

What Great-grandfather Sherlock Might Have Said:
“Possibly you have heard of his reputation as a shooter . . .”