Shoot 'Em Up: All-action-no-plot in Cinematic Form

This film is fricking awesome!

If all-action-no-plot were a movie, it would be Shoot ‘Em Up. A non-stop sequence of gun battles, with a super-cool hero, suitably charismatic villain and gorgeous piece of token eye-candy - it’s perfect if you like that sort of thing.

Any film that begins to the soundtrack of Nirvana’s Breed is going to have adrenaline seeping from its every pore, and this has more testosterone than a tag-team of wrestlers killing deer with their bare hands while swigging diesel and chanting football songs. Like watching Spurs 6-4 Reading, this requires minimal cerebral activity and is just to be enjoyed, so crack open a beer and dig in.

Clive Owen is the mysterious “Smith”, introduced sitting at a bus stop chewing a carrot, when he sees a pregnant woman being followed by a man with a gun. Smith swears, follows them and uses his carrot to kill the man in gloriously graphic fashion, whilst delivering the obligatory one-liner. Credibility duly rolls its eyes, packs its bags and leaves the screen never to return, and the film does not let up thereafter.

Owen presumably starred in this soon after having been overlooked for the role of 007, and clearly enjoys himself immensely, playing a character patently bereft of the slightest glimmer of emotional depth. His droll wit is flicked out with insouciance, his hardened features making him surprisingly well-suited to playing a tough guy, and he attacks the role with the lazy pleasure one would derive from taking out all-comers in a game of paintball. Keanue Reeves take note – this is how to make a sullen hero likeable. Paul Giamatti just about cuts it as a pantomime villain in the Alan-Rickman-Die-Hard vein, and aside from Monica Bellucci - as the sassy, drop-dead gorgeous female interest - there aren’t many other characters on the screen for any length of time prior to a good old-fashioned bullet-riddling.

Plot? Are you kidding? It’s all action, no plot, so the side-issue of harvesting babies or some such nonsense is neither here nor there. This is all about lazily watching numerous novel ways to shoot 20 people whilst avoiding getting shot yourself.

If you liked Crank, you’ll like Shoot ‘Em Up. And if you didn’t like Crank, you’ve probably not read this far down the page…