Movie review: 'Shoot 'Em Up' guns for laughs

Double your pleasure, double your fun. "Shoot 'Em Up" is an adrenaline-pumping action adventure and an unabashedly cartoonlike parody of the form. It starts full throttle, puts the pedal to the metal, then rams it through the floorboard.

Clive Owen ("Sin City,"Children of Men") seems to be challenging himself to make the most hyperkinetic movie imaginable. He takes his quest in the direction of satirical pop trash, playing "Mr. Smith," a stubble-chinned tough guy with a hair-trigger temper.

The character is a sly twist on Owen's "Mr. Intensity" film persona. Smith hates, hates, hates rude motorists, 40-year-old guys with ponytails, people who slurp their beverages and parents who publicly spank kids, and he deals with such annoyances harshly. His repeated line, "You know what makes me mad?" is destined to be this season's catchphrase.

He also has a core of chivalry, and when he sees a gun-toting ruffian chase a pregnant woman into an alleyway, he sighs and bolts to the rescue. It's a tougher fight than he bargained for. An army of assassins is chasing her, led by cunning, foul-tempered Mr. Hertz (Paul Giamatti, in an uproarious farewell to his typical meek schlub roles). After Smith delivers her baby (during the first of countless absurd/imaginative gun battles), the killers put the newborn in their crosshairs.

The script is almost irrelevant in terms of plot, but it's packed with droll jokes. Monica Bellucci plays the female lead, DQ, a hooker specializing in lactation fantasies. The role makes sense -- somebody has to feed the kid -- and it's a spot-on lampoon of the voluptuous molls who are a hallmark of such movies.

The mainspring of the action is a marrow-farming operation for a public official who literally lacks backbone, and Smith silences the filibustering gasbag in a way that is brutally hilarious. The moral is an antigun message that is preposterous in this apocalyptic context.

The film charges through the obligatory car crashes, ambushes and escapes on fast-forward, leaving extravagant demolition in its wake. Writer/director Michael Davis tips his hat to a score of essential action movies, from the Sergio Leone canon, to John Woo's bullet ballets, to "The Bourne Identity." But never for a moment does he play it straight.

Owen, who chomps carrots when not using them to maim his adversaries, is the indestructible Bugs Bunny to Giamatti's steaming, frustrated Elmer Fudd. But he's also every macho, wisecracking pistolero who ever made a joke over a gut-shot bad guy. His big, sweaty love scene with Bellucci takes place as their bedroom is being peppered by bullets, and he takes out the hit men without breaking stride. Deliriously tasteless and shamelessly entertaining, "Shoot 'Em Up" is the guiltiest pleasure of the year.

Colin Covert • 612-673-7186

Colin Covert • ccovert@startribune.com