Speaking of dumb done smartly ... Shoot 'em Up just might be the most crazy fun I've had in the theaters for quite some time; however, this is definitely not a DVD film. Much like Snakes on a Plane this is the kind of film that requires the collective experience that can only be had by sitting in a theater full of people. The semiologist, Roland Barthes, once wrote that the true pleasure of cinema comes not from the private experience of sitting in the dark but from the public experience of symbolically awakening together from as the lights turn on at the film's end. To this I would amend that the most profound and important pleasure from cinema is not in the watching but in the discussing, in being able to not only share the experience but recall the shared experience. With each absurd scene, it's hard not to turn to the people around you, exclaiming, "did that really happen? Did they really do what I think they did?" It's as if the affirmation of absurdity heightens the experience of absurdity. I went to see this film with the Mini-ster (with whom I had gone to see Snakes on a Plane) and we agreed that as fun as this film was, it would have been better had it been seen in a packed theater. Shoot 'em Up is cartoonishly absurd. Much like Hot Fuzz, Shoot 'em Up is not so much a parody of action films but rather an irreverent homage that both mocks and respects the generic conventions: the dark anti-hero, the femme fatale (hooker with a heart of gold), the hapless henchmen led by the grimacing, slightly-psychotic bad guy, lots of guns and cars, etc. While the film plays around with the idea of second-amendment rights, it in no way takes any of those ideas seriously. In fact, it is precisely the film's vapid meaninglessness that makes the film such a pleasure to watch. There is no shortage of moronic and meaningless films out there but those films (like the most recent Die Hard) contain a pretense of meaning that ultimately only turns the film into a sentimental mess. Shoot 'em Up is an honest film that knows its audience only comes for the explosions and has no problems in giving them precisely and only what they want.
On quick sidenote: I mentioned that this is a film that is very aware of itself as being part of a certain tradition of films. The number of references to classic actions films is far too numerous to go over; however, there was this one line that to me was the best line of the movie. After Hertz (Paul Giamatti) once again fails in his attempt to kill "Smith" (Clive Owen), Giamatti yells out, "F*** me sideways." If you don't get that joke then you need to see better movies.
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January 2016
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