2008 Woodie Awards
Clive Owen falls flat in film filled with guns
Movie Madness
By Ivan Moore
Rocket Movie Critic
Issue date: 9/14/07 Section: Focus
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Owen plays Smith, a former Black Ops crack shot with a dependency on carrots and shooting things.
Smith's family was gunned down during a random robbery gone wrong in which Smith supplied the guns to the robber.
This causes Smith to become a self-loathing hermit that lives with rats and survives eating homegrown carrots.
After seeing a pregnant woman almost run down by a gun-wielding maniac, Smith enters into the film's first gunfight.
He slays goon after goon, all while helping the woman give birth. Little does Smith know what is in store for him, as he soon finds himself entangled in a complicated web of baby harvesting and government corruption led by Hertz (Giamatti).
A malicious and meticulous gun for hire, Hertz is the kind of guy that will grope a dead woman's breast one minute then pick out a birthday card for his 8-year-old son the next.
Giamatti plays Hertz with great skill and mastery, delivering each line with a gentle patience that is rare in over-the-top action movies.
Unfortunately, Owen's performance seemed to lack the same amount of enthusiasm.
Smith spouts out one-liners one after another and leaves very little depth of character for Owen to play with. This might have been the reason for the lackluster performance from a normally amazing actor.
Other than the somewhat weak plot and the somewhat weak acting, "Shoot 'Em Up" supplies moviegoers with a glutton's approach to gunfire. The action is completely over the top, but it is quite imaginative.
Gunfights take place in warehouses, a gun factory, during intercourse and at 30,000 feet in the air. There is so much shooting in "Shoot 'Em Up," it's as if the guns are just extensions of the characters' hands.
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