Bang Bang (He Shot ’Em Down)

Shoot ’Em Up begins with a mesmerizing close-up of Clive Owen’s green eyes, an intense and quiet prelude to a film that, as its title reveals, will not let up for the next 93 minutes.

Owen plays a man simply known as Smith. He is, as co-star Monica Bellucci’s character describes him, “the angriest man in the world.”

Smith is minding his own business at the beginning of Shoot ’Em Up, waiting for a bus on a dark street of a nondescript city, when he sees a terrified woman in a hospital gown running away from a gunman.

Soon, Smith cannot help but get involved in the situation. Shortly thereafter, our skilled (anti-) hero finds himself entrusted with protecting the woman’s newborn baby boy, whom he delivered in the middle of the first of many gunfights to come, no less.

The baby’s welcome into this world? A big ol’ bull’s eye, for he now is the target of a shadowy force that has sent a team of mysterious and endless assailants, led by Hertz (a madly and restlessly trigger-happy Paul Giamatti).

Amid a hail of bullets and facing every conceivable permutation of gunfight (including one during sex and one while skydiving), Smith teams up with a prostitute (Bellucci) to protect the baby and sort out who wants him dead – before the unlikely family ends up on the wrong side of a bullet.

Shoot ’Em Up is, without a doubt, perhaps the more hyperactive we’ll have seen this year – and happy to be so. The violence is so absurd anyone would have to be a nut-nut to take it seriously.

This is an audacious movie, one that is quite fun from beginning to end. For an actioner, it is quite the comedy, and vice versa; it’s great.

I can guarantee you it’ll be the most fun you’ll have watching a violent movie this fall. Trust me.

My Rating ***1/2

Photo: New Line Cinema.