Shoot 'Em Up, written and directed by Michael Davis 7 out of 10

Shoot 'Em Up, written and directed by Michael Davis 
7 out of 10


This action - crime movie has three main arguments speaking for it:

Clive Owen aka Smith
Monica Belucci as Donna Quintano
Paul Giamatti as Hertz

Otherwise, the storyline is rather forgettable and not very convincing...some might say it is in line with The Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco, the ultimate master of the absurd theater.

However, all the aforementioned stars are among the best we can see in cinemas and their performances can be convincing even if they just read from a DaDaist script.

The debut of the film is forceful.
Smith is waiting for the bus to arrive, when he sees a woman running.

She is followed by a vicious thug holding a pistol.
He walks out of  the car he crashed against another vehicle.

Smith intervenes and we can see that this man is something of a cross between James Bond and Jason Bourne.
Not only he can shoot right on target, but he has an exceptional intuition and ability to react in a split second.

He hits targets that create a space for him, anticipates with a few moves ahead what he has to do, where the enemy is coming from and eliminates a series of killers.

Alas, the woman is dead.
She has a baby and the gang of monsters want the baby dead as well.

The hero runs with it in a toilet, where he has to place the infant on the floor.
That was rather insalubrious!

But what can one do when chased by professional hit men.
Hertz is the loathsome leader of the villains.

He kills without emotion.
Which means he is a psychopath- those are the individuals who feel no emotion and can speculate what others feel and they don't.

To save the infant and feed him, Smith takes him to a prostitute, or sex worker as the politically correct name would be today.
Donna Quintano aka resplendent Monica Bellucci is lactating.

The clever, if abhorrent, Hertz understands that he needs to find the lactating women in the town.
All in all, the plot does not seem to be the strong point of the film.

On the contrary, it seems somewhat preposterous to have this tough, ruthless specialist go to extreme pains to save the baby.
I mean, it is possible to envisage hard men attached to children, but it still seems improbable.

Shoot 'Em Up is interesting to some extent, mainly because of the lead actors and actress, but without them, it would be completely avoidable.