Shoot 'Em Up

Director: Michael Davis
Year Released: 2007
Rating: 1.5

Gunsmith Clive Owen takes it upon himself to protect the baby of a murdered woman with surrogate mother/whore Monica Bellucci following along, but Paul Giamatti wants the newborn dead for some reason or another. Incoherent is one word for this, stupid is another - some people consider this some kind of spoof of the genre, but the genre is already excessive when just playing it straight, plus I don't see much in the way of satire when Owen kills people with carrots (or Giamatti actually has to utter the phrase "wascally wabbit"). I originally picked up some kind of conservative agenda - Pro-Life, Pro-Gun (a contradiction, I know) - but that gets muddled later with the inclusion of a Democratic Presidential Candidate, a gun lobbyist and something 'er other, and I realized the only thing director Davis gives a damn about is cool gunfight setups and high body counts (IMDb claims there's 100!), which is great if you're a thirteen-year-old with anger issues and an attic full of dead cats. Giamatti, bless his whimsical little heart, is not the ideal bad guy, I'm afraid: too giddy, too pudgy, too unkempt - he seems more like a 45-year-old who lives with his Mom and works in the TV section of Best Buy than a torturer.