Shoot 'Em Up.

"Gun fights while delivering a baby? Check. Gun fights during sex? Check. Gun fights while sky diving? Check." Collin A at Twitch: "The idea of someone extracting the DNA of a vintage John Woo gun battle and stretching it to absurdist lengths resonated and the project came to fruition with a dream of an eclectic cast - Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti, Monica Bellucci - and the backing of a major studio (New Line). The finished film tows the line of living up to and being a victim of its own hype."

"I've rarely been as uncomfortable in a screening room as I was at this geekshow, a quasi-parody of action pictures that, like Grindhouse and The Last Action Hero before it, will fail to satisfy genre junkies or anyone who thinks the genre is in need of a good ribbing," blogs Robert Cashill. "So what is this movie that has me so riled up? This I will say: Shoot 'Em Up is worth devoting time to dispatching, unlike run-of-the-mill dogs that can be dismissed in a paragraph or two." And off he goes.

Updated through 9/10.

"Getting worked up over Shoot 'Em Up's excessive bloodshed is playing right into its hands," notes Nick Schager at Slant. "So instead of slamming its loud-and-proud Looney Tunes carnage as indicative of a cultural desire to view violence as detached, consequence-free spectacle, perhaps it's better to simply ask: When action is this thoroughly, willfully divorced from any sense of gravity (both the tonal and scientific sort), how is anyone supposed to be excited by it?"

This is "a genuine action comedy with its action rooted in comedy and comedy defined by action," writes Eric Kohn at the Reeler. "[W]hile Shoot 'Em Up never rises above the conceptual levity of a depraved Looney Tunes episode (apart from Owen and his carrots, Giamatti's outrageous vehemence in the face of ongoing defeat has much in common with Yosemite Sam), there's a method behind the absurdity, a uniting force emanating straight from the director's chair."

It's an "extremely violent guilty pleasure of a thriller," writes Chuck Wilson in the Voice, where he also can't help wondering what Owen would have done with Bond.

Update: "Halfway into Shoot 'Em Up, we're expected to care not only about the plot - some MacGuffin about a gun manufacturer and a baby factory for bone marrow transplants - but also about the 'characters,' such as they are," writes Alonso Duralde at MSNBC. "So it's not enough for Owen to slide down a rope with a machine gun, spinning in a circle and taking out henchmen on various floors of a building - now we're supposed to care about his dead wife and child? Say what you will about Bugs Bunny, at least he never needed a backstory."

Updates, 9/10: Movie City News pulls Roger Ebert's best quote: "I don't need a lot of research to be confident that never before have I seen a movie open with the hero delivering a baby during a gun battle, severing the umbilical cord with a gunshot, and then killing a villain by penetrating his brain with a raw carrot."

Salon's Stephanie Zacharek: "The picture is so over the top it disappears up its own ass."

"I'm happy to affirm my general devotion to the whole Bill of Rights, in particular the First Amendment, which protects Michael Davis's right to make this movie, New Line Cinema's right to market it and, best of all, my right to tell you what a worthless piece of garbage it is," writes AO Scott in the New York Times.

Similarly, Slate's Dana Stevens: "I get it that as soon as graphic novels or video games are invoked as references in a movie, we're all supposed to chuckle indulgently at the content. But I refuse to relinquish my right to be repelled by this nasty piece of work."

"[T]he unabashed comic book crudeness will likely wear thin fast," warns Kevin Crust in the Los Angeles Times.

Posted by dwhudson at September 6, 2007 9:24 AM