by Christian De Matteo

SOLID

Is it possible that as I write this, one week after the film’s release, Shoot ‘Em Up, heralded as the next great action movie to reinvigorate the genre is off the top ten, banished to the lower echelons of money-making movie history while Mr. Bean’s Holiday holds tight to the 10 spot?

Alas, yes, it is.  Shoot ‘Em Up landed well below expectations, not at all catching the public’s eye like many of us thought it would.  But that does not make a bad movie always.  Sometimes this happens to great movies badly advertised or just ahead of their time.

Neither is the case for Shoot ‘Em Up.  Advertised to prepubescent boys and men with prepubescent taste (I’m not being condescending at all;  I’m one of them), the Clive Owen auctioneer was to be the craziest, most wonderfully violent action film made since John Woo new what he was doing in Hong Kong.  In fact, directly inspired by the Hard Boiled series starring Chow-Yun Fat and other films of that ilk, writer/director Michael Davis was hoping to bring American action fare back to the Looney Tune world where it ought to be.  And I agree, and I went to see it opening weekend.

Michael Davis, however, also had another goal he neglected to inform us about.  In a film starring the phenomenal Clive Owen (one of my favorite modern actors), Paul Giamatti, who gives a perfect scenery-chewing, mustache twirling performance and gives fresh breath to a cliché villain, and Monica “I’m so hot, I can’t even take it” Belluci, writer/director Davis decided to also sneak in a not-so-subtle, slam-you-over-the-head political message… against the item that makes his movie work.

I’m not kidding about this.

Shoot ‘Em Up is an anti-gun movie.

No, really.

The bad guys are all gun-loving, gun company owners and employees who also enjoy hunting.  Therefore:  THEY ARE BAD.  Davis assumes the audience will all agree with this premise without thought and simply accept that the hero, who wouldn’t have made it out of the first sequence without a gun as he is trained to fight in no real other way but gun-play (and carrot-fu, apparently, as he kills two men with carrots he grows in his squatter apartment), is fighting the good fight with bullets and blood to stop the gun trade… with guns.

To Davis there is no seeming inconsistency of point here.  But more importantly, the director doesn’t seem to think that skull-boinking us with this message won’t effect our enjoyment of a film we went to see to escape the dangers and exhaustion associated with thinking.  Does he believe that in this relaxed state we will be more suseptable to suggestion and brainwashing.

Perhaps some people will be.  But I was not one of them, and I think few true action fans will be.  The point of going to a gonzo/ape s**t style movie is to see crazy things, laugh, get excited, be thrilled and leave happy.  Not to have gotten the point of an after school special.  And if you are going to attempt to indoctrinate your audience, perhaps a clever, more subtle, camouflaged approach would work better, so we aren’t constantly being brought out of the action to contemplate the validity of current gun laws and what we too can do in our communities to make safer and healthier environments for our fellow mankind.

This was not what I thought I would be writing about when I saw this.  I thought I would be telling you about how absolutely insane the film was, how many cool creative kills I witnessed, how much fun I had and how sexy Monica Belluci was.  How cool Clive Owen was.  How awesome Paul Giamatti was.  All those things happened, all those factors are present and Davis has made one of the most visually engaging and enjoyable action movies in years.

But not without simultaneously apologizing for doing it.  And it’s the apology, the “I swear I’m also socially conscious” statement of the film that bothers me.  Artists should never apologize for their art.  They should make art consistent with their ethics and be proud of it as such.  If you are truly against the glorification of guns, don’t make a film about how cool people with them can be and then insert an insipid “plot” to make sure we know you’re actually a good guy.