Shoot Em Up - Preview and Comic-Con reaction
Preview by Jack Foley
IF THE trailer is anything to go by, then Shoot Em Up could emerge as one of the year’s most guilty pleasures.
By director Michael Davis’s own admission (in an early interview with Empire magazine), he’s tried to create the smallest amount of time between gunfights – and the action packed trailer suggests he’s succeeded.
The film stars Clive Owen as a mysterious loner who takes it upon himself to protect a hooker (Monica Bellucci) and her baby from a crazed hitman and his mob (played by Paul Giamatti). The loner has no connection to the hooker, save wanting to do the right thing, but his decision to step into the fray leads to some suitably outlandish shoot ‘em up gunplay.
Davis told Empire that he’s been longing to do a wall to wall action movie ever since he wrote his first James Bond novel as a kid – and confidently proclaimed the ensuing film to be John Woo’s wet dream.
First glimpses of the trailer suggest an utterly nutty action thriller, complete with stylistic references to the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone – witness the freeze-frame style posters of each of its stars (reminiscent of The Good, The Bad & The Ugly), or the mere presence of a mysterious loner offering to do a good deed for no apparent reason.
But advance word from Comic-Con this weekend suggests action fans have been cheering it to the rafters at each of its advance screenings. A report on Rotten Tomatoes claimed the film had brought down the house, with audiences laughing, cheering and clapping their way through each of Davis’s extravagant set pieces.
Aside from references to Leone, Shoot ‘Em Up also claims to be a throwback to the shameless action romps of the late ’80s and early ’90s and a time when films didn’t rely on buildings to collapse or explosions galore to get their kicks.
Rather, this is about individuals in peril and how they get out of seemingly impossible situations – such as a sky-diving ding dong and one spot of gunplay mid-sex. The characters, too, are said to be individuals, with Bellucci’s lactating hooker, in particular, catering for a very specific client base.
Just how all of this will translate to a complete movie remains to be seen – but the word is most definitely strong on this one and we can’t wait. Shoot ‘Em Up opens in UK cinemas on September 14.