1/5 Anti-Second Amendment and Anti-Masonic?
  by M. Rowe (Honolulu, HI USA)
The villain in this movies wears a Freemasonry lapel pin throughout (square and compass with a G in the middle). Clearly we are meant to understand that "Mason = Evil." But it is not discussed anywhere in the movie and I don't get the point for making this lapel pin displayed so prominently in so many scenes. Also, the end of the movie reveals the entire plot, if you can call it a plot, is about a man (Clive Owen) shooting hundreds of people in an attempt to assist an anti-second amendment agenda. This makes no sense whatsoever. Save your money. Save your time. Save your brain.

4/5 Hilarious!
  by A. Chakrabarti (Tennessee, USA)
This movie kept me laughing until the very end. Movies often employ dialogue to get laughs, but this is the first movie I've seen that uses pure action almost the whole way through. And it's not the cutesy little stunts done by screw-ups. No Ben Stillers falling on banana peels. No, this was bad ass hilarity. You should watch it knowing that you are watching a comedy though. If your sense of humor is a little slow on the uptake, you might end up being one of the reviewers that give this film only one star. But please save yourself the embarrassment, and don't do that.

3/5 Didn't Click with this one
  by SaintViper (United States)
I think the movie was trying to combine the cleverness and grit of a Guy Ritchie movie, with the over the top comedy aspect of a Naked Guy/Airplane type movie. It's a formula that's going to be really tough to pull off. The movie makes a pretty good attempt, but in the end I didn't think that the violence was interesting enough, and the humor wasn't funny enough to pull it off. Maybe those types of movies just don't go together.


5/5 Tongue in Cheek and Absolutely Proud of It.
  by Dax Schaffer
I add my two cents, only because I do not see enough 5 star reviews present here.

Shoot 'em Up is not for everyone. If you hate it, I'm sorry, not much can be done for you. A lot of reviewers say that it is mindless and I understand this point of view, but when taking into account how lavishly constructed the action scenes of this movie actually are I find it a somewhat difficult sentiment to take part in. The film takes everything about action flicks and simultaneously celebrates and makes fun of those qualities. It's over the top, and manages to stay up there throughout most of the movie. The plot is obviously contrived, a notion serving only to forward progressively more ridiculous and complicated gun fighting sequences. One's suspension of disbelief is activated not only by impossible action scenes, but also by the direct parallel that the plot makes with cartoon characters. Owen is Bugs Bunny (We know this from his constant obsession of eating carrots), and Giamatti is Elmer Fudd (Balding and 'spousing out direct quotations like "You're a Wascally Wabbit").

The dialogue is cheesy, and purposefully so. Some of Giamatti's one liners are priceless and will have you saying, "Wow, what a stupid and yet hilarious bad guy line." It's plain to see that the actors are having fun with the roles, reveling in perfectly defined characters that don't have to go through huge emotional changes.

I saw another reviewer saying that the film works on two levels and I have to agree. It can appeal to film snobs (myself included), showcasing its knowledge of genre films and making you think, "damn, they nailed really it!" or you can simply turn off your brain and have a good time watching some incredibly well done fight scenes. If you've come from a strong background of cartoons and video games, you will probably appreciate a lot of the "feel" that this film has created, as it is genuinely unique from other action flicks, tongue in cheek and absolutely proud of it.

A warning though, the film is violent and sexually explicit (wait till you see one of the sex scenes, oh my God). I say this only to let people know that it is meant for mature audiences, not to say that it is a bad movie. I seriously don't understand why so many people come and give movies like this a bad review because they have violence in them, why are you even trying to watch movies like this if you don't want to see violence? The main review here by Bret Fetzer also mentions that one of the few drawbacks of the film is a trace of misogyny, a quality that is so directly inherent in action movies that it doesn't seem like even this film was able to avoid it.

A fantastic movie. Not a perfect 10, but I give it 5 stars to balance out the negative reviews. I hope that this review will become helpful to some people.

5/5 totally awesome, from the bus stop to the Dairy Queen . . .
  by trebe
Shoot 'em Up (2007) is an outrageously slick action flick, which seems to slide seamlessly between scenes jammed with amazing stunts, violence, and gunfire. Writer and director Michael Davis, wanted his film to be 'guncentric', all about the heavy duty use of firearms, and except for the judicious use of a certain hard orange vegetable, that is pretty much what he has done.

In a wild opening sequence, Mr. Smith (Clive Owen) intervenes to in plot to kill a pregnant woman, and by the end of it, dead bodies are strewn everywhere, Smith has delivered a baby, had a face to face meeting with top baddie Mr. Hertz (Paul Giamatti), done some wild sliding, some high flying, and has a new best buddy. And that's just the beginning of an outrageously entertaining contest, between the quick-tempered and unstoppable Smith, and the ultra annoying, intuitive, ex-FBI 'forensic behavior consultant', turned killer, Hertz. Along the way, pieces of the puzzle start to fall in place, in a cartoonlike story that is uberbizarre.

In need of a babysitter, Smith turns to Donna Quintano (Monica Bellucci), a hooker who's specialty is servicing those with a lactation fetish. "DQ" is soon forced to team up with Smith, after Hertz and his soldiers show up, looking for the boy. Hertz is damn hard to kill, has uncanny tracking ability, and an almost unlimited supply of men. The story has so many wicked twists, with shootout following inventive shootout. The situations, setups, and stunts, just keep coming, and get more and more intense, peaking when Smith take a dive from a plane, and engages in an insanely exciting, and delightful gunbattle in the air.

Hertz's annoying face appears once more, and this time Smith gets his fingers snapped like a bunch of carrots, but still won't reveal where the boy, now called 'Oliver' is. When Hertz decides to get 'invasive', it's time for another miraculous escape, one that features a crazy and painful method for firing a bullet. The finale in a Dairy Queen, shows Smith finding another way to employ that hard orange vegetable.

If you want a killer action flick that just never stops, Shoot 'em Up is definitely one of best in recent years. Michael Davis had been doing smaller films, but this project proves the big time is where he belongs. Davis provides an interesting, informative, and almost non-stop commentary track. He repeatedly says that different things were included in the film, just because it 'made him laugh'. There are some cool featurettes covering the making of the film, including the use of robotic stand-in babies. Most movies do not live up to the hype, but this is the rare exception, and it may just make you laugh too.