Shoot Em Up review, it's stupidgood

I have mentioned that Ms. Bellucci kills me right? Yeah, I did mention that.

So, the movie. It is Mr. Handsome (Clive Owen) and Ms. Gorgeous and guns, lots of guns. Tons of guns. There is an action sequence in almost every single minute of this movie. [spoiler alert: next sentence] the (obligatory) sex scene is an action sequence. And always with the guns, lots of guns. Very reminiscent of early Hong-Kong action movies, before they got snapped up by Hollywood and lost their soul (Face Off anyone?).

Shoot Em Up reminded me of Grindhouse, in that it took cliche's from the genre and absolutely blew them out of the stratosphere. That is one refreshing thing about Shoot Em Up -- there is never even the remotest attempt at veracity or realism or depth. None -- not one. There is humor, or attempts at humor, and there are guns, and there are plot devices to keep the "story" going. That is all.

I can't say the camera angles were particularly refreshing, or any of the plot points, or the directing. I can say the sound track was pretty dam good, there are some great moments with the movie and the music -- reminded me of (not as good as, but close) the music in the first Matrix movie.

The audience, even though this was a near-opening night for the movie in a normal corporate theatre and not a beer theatre, was openly laughing at the ludicrousness of the movie. Whether they laughed from enjoyment or derision was hard to tell at times. But the audience was lively.

I'd say, get good and boozed up and see it in a beer theatre with a loud audience and a group of raucous friends, it could get into "A" territory. In any other context, it barely holds onto a B- in my book. It's watchable, and refreshingly frank in it's brutal simplicity. Expecting nothing more than lots of gunshots, it is fun.

As Shocho coined the phrase, it is definitely stupidgood.