In This Section
TV Guide Spotlight
Also on TVGuide.com
|
« Ask FlickChick
DVD Tuesday: Sex, Violence, Endangered Baby: I love Shoot 'Em Up!
Clive Owen in Shoot 'Em Up courtesy New Line Cinema
DVD Tuesday: A girl, a gun, a baby and Clive Owen careen through this sly meta-action movie romp in an exhilarating hail of bullets
Writer-director Michael Davis' deliriously trashy mash-up of John Woo and Loony Toons was greeted by a mix of scathing denunciations and cluelessly slavering encomiums applauding its over-the-top excesses; rare was the reviewer who deigned to notice its sly, poignantly affectionate deconstruction of contemporary action-movie clichés.
Shoot 'Em Up tanked at the box office, but I suspect it's going to find its following on DVD, where each and every knowingly audacious frame can be frozen and savored.
An itinerant, carrot-chomping, down-on-his-luck man with no name (Clive Owen) — come on, "Mr. Smith" is not a name — is waiting at a deserted big-city bus stop in the middle of a dark, dark night when a hugely pregnant woman waddles by with a gun-toting thug in hot pursuit.
Smith intervenes — you just know he once knew someone like her, except that then there was no one there to help — and finds himself delivering the stranger's baby (of course he cuts the placenta with a bullet) while fighting a pitched gun battle. Infant in hand, he stages a daring escape from sneering, sadistic head villain Hertz (Paul Giamatti) who, it turns out, wasn't after the now-deceased woman: He wants the baby.
"Smith," who knows little about birthing babies and less about looking after them, makes a beeline for the most maternal person he knows: Donna (Monica Belluci) — could that be as in Ma-donna? — a lactating prostitute who caters to middle-aged "babies" with the big bucks to patronize super-specialized brothels.
With Donna onboard as wet nurse and occasional concubine, Smith sets about finding out why Hertz and his goons are so hell-bent on killing an infant, a quest that's consistently subordinated to ecstatically deranged action sequences: The naked Smith fighting off an army of gun-toting mercenaries while making love to Donna (and you thought you could multitask); Smith improvising a series of Rube Goldberg-esque booby traps at a gun warehouse owned by pervy firearms magnate Hammerstein (the gauntly seductive Stephen McHattie, once first in line to replace Robert Englund as Freddie Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street series); Smith sliding down a conveyer belt, baby in one hand, blazing pistol in the other.
Davis' influences are clear: Sergio Leone Westerns; John Woo's Hard-Boiled (1992), whose iconic centerpiece involves brutal cop Chow Yun Fat with a chubby-cheeked infant on his hip; Warner Bros. animator Chuck Jones' Bugs Bunny and Roadrunner vs. Coyote cartoons — Hertz's "Ride of the Valkyries" cell-phone ring isn't an homage to Apocalypse Now, it's referencing the classic cartoon What's Opera, Doc, featuring none other than Bugs and his perpetual nemesis Elmer Fudd.
It should come as no surprise that Davis sold Shoot 'Em Up on the strength of an animated version of one of the film's balletic gunfights.
But the wonder of Shoot 'Em Up is its willingness to transgress without being mean — it's not torture porn, but it's also not a brainless imitation of weightless video-game excesses. Writer-director Davis, whose unpromising previous credits range from direct-to-video teen sex comedies (Eight Days a Week, Girl Fever) to kiddie pix like Prehysteria! 3, somehow synthesized every action-movie cliché into an über-action film that simultaneously plays it so straight it's darkly funny and cuts straight to the overworked genre's heart.
Things to Consider:
What's the difference between spoof and homage to a familiar genre? Examples?
Is it possible to love a particular genre — horror, romantic comedy, Western — while fully acknowledging its clichés and flaws? How?
Why do smart, sophisticated moviegoers who like to be challenged also love genre movies?
Send your movie questions to FlickChick.
Hear Maitland on the weekly podcast TV Guide Talk.
See Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this week's new flicks on the Movie Talk vodcast.
Previously in DVD Tuesday:
Freeway
A Mighty Wind
It's a Wonderful Life
Waitress
Laura
Cop
All About Eve
Severance
Sweet Smell of Success
Daughters of Darkness
The Crazies
Blade Runner
Zodiac
Manhunter
A Simple Plan
Taxi Driver
Renaissance
Blowup
Hot Fuzz
300
Ace in the Hole
Eyes Without a Face
Apocalypto
Citizen Kane
La Jetée
Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)
Bob le Flambeur
Near Dark
Perfect Blue
Pan's Labyrinth
Les Girls
The Girl Who Knew Too Much
The Queen
Expresso Bongo
I'm Not Scared
Shocking Grindhouse Double Bill! — Scanners and The Candy Snatchers
Don't Look Now
Re-Animator
Casino Royale
Pi
The Prestige
13 Tzameti
The Departed
Suspiria
Kiss and Make Up
Kiss Me Deadly
The Long Good Friday
What Alice Found
The Devil's Backbone
The Descent
The Devil Wears Prada
Pandora's Box
The Thief and the Cobbler
Nashville
Panic in the Streets/Jack Palance Interview
The Pusher Trilogy
Scarface
Slither
Sunset Blvd.
In Cold Blood
Brick
|
TVGuide Links:
|
|
|
|
Jan 15, 2008 1:24 PM
|
Last week I railed against the against the depravity of Freeway, so you might expect that I'd hate Shoot 'Em Up with equal zeal. Well, who said you have to be consistent?! I love Shoot 'Em Up! There is a passion and a joy in a movie like this, clearly everyone in the movie is having a fantastic time shooting (no pun intended) it. And it shows. It's pure action-candy.
It reminded me in a weird way of The Aristocrats. First, I was shocked and outraged over all the depravity, but in both movies I quickly realized that the only way to enjoy them is to sit back, leave your critical mind behind, and just enjoy! The second time I saw The Aristocrats, I saw it with a friend, and he couldn't really do that, so while I was rolling on the floor laughing hysterically, he got more and more repulsed with every telling of the joke (and finally requested that we shut the thing off, I think he thinks I'm pervert now). I suspect that if I watched Shoot 'Em Up with one of my more highbrow movie-going friends, they'd have a similar reaction.
I love genre movies, when they are done right, they're spectacular. It's true, they most often don't achieve the depth of an "art-house" movie, but they can certainly be challenging. As an example, just yesterday I saw Gone Baby Gone, Ben Affleck's directorial debut, and while it is certainly a flawed movie (I blame Lehane), the moral question it asks of the viewer at the end is gut-wrenching. It stayed in my mind for hours afterwards.
And who says genre movies can't be masterpieces? Have they never seen Blade Runner (two genres in one!)? The Shining? Or, a personal favorite of mine, Brick?
That said, genre movies have the advantage that they don't necessarily have to be challenging or "deep". They only have to deliver on their promise to work. It only has to fulfill on it's essential promise, it's genre, to satisfy us. Obviously, if it sucks, then it sucks no matter how much it delivers on the conventions, but that's not the point. The point is that it doesn't need to be a masterpiece to be highly enjoyable and rewatchable.
The reasons genres become genres is that the formula works. People wouldn't make all those romantic comedies, whodunits and sci-fi flicks if the formula didn't strike a chord with the people who enjoy them. I read a literature critic who made an impassioned defense for books that were easy to read; she said that a major criteria for the quality of a book is its readability. If a book is unreadable, it's not the readers fault, she argued. I feel much the same about genre movies: the fact that they are so enjoyable to so many people means that they do work at some level, not the other way around.
|
|
Jan 15, 2008 2:59 PM
|
Thank you Oskar!
That said, I also love Last Year at Marienbad, which is hardly the model of the easily readable text.
I like to be challenged by movies, but the challenges don't all have to be the same: Genre movies demand that you bring one set of references to the table and movies like Marienbad demand that you bring another.
For me, what matters is being engaged, rather than being a passive viewer, and no-one who writes posts as long and thoughtful as yours could ever be accused of passivity.
|
|
Jan 15, 2008 5:06 PM
|
This had to be hands down one of the worst movies I've seen all year. I'm all for ultra-violence and action movies, but you are better off spending an hour and half at a shooting range watching people fire guns. That's how much you'll care about the characters or their situations. It's mind numbing after a while, one shoot out after another (and fyi - one of my favorite shoot-em-ups is John Woo's The Killers, which has well-done over-the-top mayhem in the midst of an actual story.)
This movie...from beginning to end there is nothing to care about. Don't say you weren't warned.
|
|
Jan 15, 2008 5:23 PM
|
The difference behind homage and spoof, eh?
Well, homage is, generally speaking a movie scene, or bit, that slyly references a scene from another movie while maintaining its film's narrative.
Spoof is taking sequences and blowing them up to epic proportions for the purpose of getting a laugh - usually, but not always combined with satire [which is what spoof/parody become when used over the course of an entire film to point out the sublime silliness of a genre's tropes].
Thus a good many scenes and bits [likes the cell phone, for instance] in Shoot 'Em Up are homages, while virtually every scene in Hot Fuzz is a spoof of a similar scene in some other action/buddy/cop flick - and the combination of all the spoof sequences are cleverly configured into a plot, which also spoofs/parodies that genre, creating satire.
Although Shoot 'Em Up contains a number of homages, it avoids satire by not using only homages [which it does not exaggerate] - instead, the homages are cut into a series of fresh action sequences that are played straight [though not without wit], to create an equally fresh new narrative that takes the genre to new levels - again, with wit and style - but does not parody the genre's conventions outright. [At least, that's how I see it.]
Which is why I love the film.
The existence of Shoot 'Em Up is an argument that a genre film can be made that acknowledges the tropes of a genre - warts and all - and still be a terrific film that was, clearly, made with love. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? would be another example - and it's actually combining a couple of geners.
As a movie lover who's as comfortable with an Akira Kurosawa film [especialy Ran, Throne of Blood and Seven Samurai], a Satoshi Kon anime´ [Paprika and Tokyo Godfathers are amazing, for example], Citizen Kane and Shoot 'Em Up, I can only say that different films present different allures, and that each is as rewarding as the next but for entirely different reasons: some for the intellectual challenge; some for truthful emotional content; others for "the ride," and so on...
|
|
Jan 15, 2008 5:54 PM
|
What's the difference between spoof and homage to a familiar genre? Examples?
In my mind, homages are references to previous works (particular scenes or characters) that are meant to honor those works, while spoofs are more mean-spirited. I would consider Slither a compilation of homages mixed in with its own story, while Scary Movie is a send-up of well-known horror movie conventions. But I also think that something can be both spoof and homage. I get the feeling that while Hot Fuzz pokes fun at cop-movie clichés, it was made as a loving tribute to the same.
Is it possible to love a particular genre - horror, romantic comedy, western -- while fully acknowledging its clichés and flaws? How?
It's absolutely possible, in the same way that we are able to love the people we love despite their flaws. Or, to sound like a cliché myself, maybe we love them because of their flaws. I happen to love romantic comedies (sue me), and the clichés are why I go back to them again and again. The meet-cute, the implausible coincidences, the last-second happy endings... they're like comfort food. And I Eat 'Em Up. (Horrible, horrible... sorry.)
Why do smart, sophisticated movie goers who like to be challenged also love genre movies?
Well I'm just not sure, because I'm neither of those things. But I suspect it has to do with the nature of genres, such as science fiction or horror, to require the audience to think about a world outside of their reality. Richard Gere falling in love with a prostitute who looks like Julia Roberts is far-fetched, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility. Aliens and spaceships and zombies, well, that requires some imagination.
And by the way, I've added Shoot 'Em Up to my Netflix queue. I need more sophistication in my life. 
|
|
Jan 16, 2008 11:31 AM
|
Since you mentioned Sergio Leone's westerns, I thought Sam Raimi's "The Quick and the Dead" was a fine homage to those....
He managed to capture the lingering close-ups and drawn out suspense really well, without making fun of them like some spoofs have done...
And Raimi's "Evil Dead 2" was an homage to the Three Stooges of all things... and also well done.
|
|
Jan 16, 2008 1:14 PM
|
When I think of an "homage" (what's your favorite pronunciation?), I envision a work of hard that pays respectful tribute to an earlier work. It's more than a sly, singular allusion.
Examples:
Chinatown: pays homage to a wealth of 30s and 40s gumshoe and noir flicks.
Raiders Of The Lost Ark: pays homage to episodic cliffhanger matinees
Halloween: pays homage to Psycho. But unlike the previous examples, it's as much about style as it is about direct references such as names and leading ladies. Scream does something similar as a nod towards all slashers but in an even more direct fashion.
For me, a spoof is a work of art making fun of some other piece or genre. I think the most successful ones are those that are also homages to previous works, but it's not a requirement.
Examples of successful spoofs:
Scary Movie: I found it surprisingly scary and funny. The sequels only went for funny and didn't seem to also love the slasher.
Young Frankenstein (er... "shteen"): works so well because it's carefully crafted with love for Universal's monster movies. As a kid I even thought it was an old movie being re-released!
Airplane and The Naked Gun: These are a little different. They don't seem to directly respect the disaster or police procedural. But they are played with such honest seriousness, we don't get the sense that the creators actively dislike their "victims". This is in direct contrast to, say, Team America: World Police where Parker and Stone don't seem to care for anyone they lampoon.
|
|
Jan 16, 2008 4:24 PM
|
|
|
