Shoot 'Em Up (film)

Shoot 'Em Up

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Michael Davis
Produced by
Written by Michael Davis
Starring
Music by Paul Haslinger
Cinematography Peter Pau
Edited by Peter Amundson
Production
company
Distributed by New Line Cinema
Release date
  • September 7, 2007 (2007-09-07)
Running time
 84 minutes[1]
Country United States
Language English
Italian
Budget $39 million[2]
Box office $26.8 million[2]

Shoot 'Em Up is a 2007 gun fu action film written and directed by Michael Davis. Starring Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti, Monica Bellucci and Stephen McHattie, it follows Smith (Owen), a drifter who rescues a newborn from being killed by assassin Hertz (Giamatti) and his henchmen. Smith flees from the gang, enlisting the help of prostitute D. Q. (Bellucci) to keep the baby safe as he unravels the conspiracy. The film was produced by Susan Montford, Don Murphy and Rick Benattar under Murphy's film banner Angry Films.

The film was released on September 7, 2007 and underperformed at the box office.

Plot

At a bus stop in a rough part of town, a drifter named Smith (Clive Owen) sees a pregnant woman fleeing a hitman. Following them into a warehouse, Smith murders the hitman by stabbing him in the face with a carrot. As more thugs arrive, the woman starts to give birth, and Smith is forced to deliver the woman's baby during a shootout. Pursued by head assassin Karl Hertz (Paul Giamatti), the woman is shot and killed, forcing Smith to narrowly escape with the newborn.

Leaving the baby in a park, Smith hopes someone will adopt the child, only for a passing woman to be killed by a shot from Hertz's sniper rifle. Realizing Hertz is trying to kill the baby, Smith saves him, and attempts to leave him with a lactating prostitute named Donna (Monica Bellucci); despite his pleas, she refuses. Hertz arrives at the brothel shortly after and tortures Donna for information, only for Smith to return and kill Hertz's henchmen.

Taking Donna to his hideout, Smith realizes that the baby (who he names Oliver) stops crying when he hears heavy metal music, leading him to conclude his mother lived near a heavy metal club. Followed by Hertz, Smith is then forced to shoot his way out of his hideout, before he and Donna head to a nearby club. Heading above the club, they discover an apartment containing medical equipment and two dead pregnant women; Smith concludes the women were all impregnated with a specific man's sperm so they could birth matching bone marrow donors.

Hiding in a motel room, Smith and Donna are attacked by masked men during sex, Smith realizes his assailants' weapons are all "Hammerson" models unavailable to the public. Before he pursues this clue, Smith takes Donna and Oliver to a war museum, and hides them in a M24 Chaffee tank. Infiltrating the Hammerson factory, Smith witnesses Hertz and Hammerson in conversation about how they do not want the Second Amendment on the right to bear arms repealed by the next President, and notices Hammerson owns a German Shepherd called Duchess. Smith booby-traps the entire facility, allowing him to kill the thugs and escape.

Smith soon notices an article on Senator Harry Rutledge (Daniel Pilon), a presidential candidate campaigning for stricter gun laws. Smith deduces Rutledge has cancer and requires a bone marrow transplant, which is why he had surrogates impregnated with his sperm, and why Hertz and Hammerson want Oliver dead. If the infants die, the Senator will not receive a donation and will be unfit to run as President. Smith tells Donna to leave town, before Smith contacts one of Rutledge's henchmen to request an appointment. Meeting aboard a plane, the Senator confirms Smith's suspicions, only for Smith to notice dog hair on his trousers.

Discerning the hair belongs to Duchess, and that the Senator struck a deal with Hammerson, Smith takes Rutledge hostage, only for Hertz and Hammerson to appear. Escaping from Hertz, Smith kills the Senator and leaps from the aircraft with a parachute. Killing several pursuing henchmen, Smith is shot and, after safely landing, soon collapses due to his injuries. Smith subsequently awakes in Hammerson's mansion. Hertz tortures Smith, breaking his fingers to learn where he sent Donna and Oliver. As Hertz prepares to cut Smith's eyes, Smith manages to break free and kill several thugs and Hammerson. Cornered and struggling to use his gun, Smith places live rounds between his broken fingers and, by detonating them using a fireplace, shoots and critically wounds Hertz. As Smith and Hertz both grab pistols and struggle to kill each other, Smith manages to fire first and kill Hertz.

Boarding a bus with Duchess, Smith soon stops at an ice-cream parlor, where he finds Donna working as a waitress while watching Oliver. The film ends as a group of amateur armed robbers enter the parlor; his hands in bandages, Smith shoots them by using a carrot to pull the trigger.

Cast

Production

Development

Having been a fan of action films, writer and director Michael Davis began with the idea for Shoot 'Em Up after coming across a climactic scene from John Woo's 1992 Hong Kong action film Hard Boiled, wherein Chow Yun-fat's character is rescuing newborn babies from gangsters. Davis has stated, "Putting together a hard-boiled guy with the most innocent thing in the world delivers dramatic tension and a great image. I thought it would be a great opening for a movie."[3][4] Films directed by French writer and director Luc Besson were cited as influences as well, particularly Nikita (1990) and Léon: The Professional (1994).[3]

Pre-production

By 2000, Davis began writing the script. Davis modeled the film's lead protagonist Smith as someone who has contrasting qualities to James Bond (i.e., Bond is a jetsetter and has gadgets, whereas Smith lives in a derelict house and uses a carrot – his favorite food – as a weapon in some circumstances). Accordingly, Davis has referred to Smith as the "anti-Bond".[3][4] Smith's hardboiled personality stemmed from Davis's personal experience when a script he wrote in 1989 about Alfred Kinsey had failed to materialize as a feature film.[5] However, owing to Davis's extensive research about the famous sexologist and to human sexuality in general, this would soon be his basis to another main character whom he named Donna Quintana (short for DQ), a lactating prostitute and Smith's love interest.[4]

"We felt Shoot 'Em Up was this truly special script with a unique voice begging to be made. It was right up our alley because it pokes fun at America’s big obsessions – guns and breasts and violence, in that order ... Michael [Davis] had a vision and passion for the script as evidenced in the animatic. We felt this was the movie he was born to direct."

—Co-producer Don Murphy on green-lighting the project.[4]

Davis put together a fifteen-minute reel of animated footage, consisting of 17,000 sketches he drew filled with action sequences that he had planned for the film. He submitted a DVD copy of the animation, and Susan Montford, Don Murphy and Rick Benattar eventually served as producers.[3] Davis's animation was passed on by film studios to give studio heads an idea of how the action scenes would play out. This got the attention of New Line Cinema's then CEO Bob Shaye who approved of the project and accepted Davis to direct.[6] Davis's first choice to play Smith had been Clive Owen from the very beginning. Owen himself was enthusiastic about the project and he accepted the role.[3]

Filming and post-production

Principal photography for the film took fifty-five days[3] in Toronto, Ontario, Canada[7] between February 13, 2006 and May 8, 2006.[8] Owen performed his own stunts in the film.[3] Both Owen and Paul Giamatti underwent firearm training in preparation for the role.[4]

Multilingual co-star Monica Bellucci dubbed her own voice for the French and Italian releases of the film.[9]

Marketing

Since July 2007, Shoot 'Em Up was publicized with a guerrilla marketing campaign by London-based agency New Media Maze. The campaign included a viral video and website[10] selling bogus items ranging from bullet-proof strollers to riot helmets for infants. A video was released on YouTube in which the company claimed to test the bullet-proof stroller by shooting at it with a submachine gun while a baby was in it.[11] The baby was then taken out of the stroller unharmed. It was all a hoax,[12][13] but the campaign was nevertheless taken seriously by global media and the blogging community.[14] For instance, Sweden's biggest evening tabloid Aftonbladet had the story as its lead on their online edition for some time.[15]

Music

Shoot 'Em Up (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Soundtrack album by Paul Haslinger
Released August 28, 2007 (2007-08-28)
Studio Varèse Sarabande
Genre Film score
Length 36:36

The film score for Shoot 'Em Up was composed by Paul Haslinger, made available for digital download and CD on August 28, 2007 by Varèse Sarabande.[16][17] Prior to the film score's release, a soundtrack album featuring nu metal and rock songs from various artists was made available on February 12, 2008.[18]

All music composed by Paul Haslinger.

Release

Though Variety initially reported a planned release during the holiday season of 2006,[19] and initial previews occurred in September of that year,[20] the film was eventually scheduled for release on September 7, 2007. Audience response from a screening at 2007's San Diego Comic-Con was very positive.[21]

The film opened in fourth place on its first weekend, earning $5,716,139 at 2,108 locations.[22] The film was a box office bomb, having earned a worldwide gross of $26,820,641 against a $39 million budget.[2]

Critical reception

The review aggregating website Rotten Tomatoes gives Shoot 'Em Up an approval rating of 67% based on 161 surveyed critics, with an average rating of 6.2/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "As preposterous and over-the-top as Shoot 'Em Up may be, its humor and non-stop action make for a very enjoyable film."[23] Metacritic, which assigns a normalizing rating, gave 49 out of 100 based on twenty-nine critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[24]

Owen's character, a drifter who dispenses justice, has been compared to the "man with no name" characters popularized by Clint Eastwood. Peter Debruge of Variety called the film "violent and vile in equal measure", but "too stylistically audacious to dismiss outright".[25] Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter was more equivocal in his review, saying "Anyone looking for subtlety, character development or layered plotting will be disappointed, but action fans will find plenty to amuse them with this film that makes Hard Boiled look restrained", and that the film is "all very good and undeniably fun".[26] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone praised the film (giving it three stars out of four) and called Shoot 'Em Up a "wet dream for action junkies [that] leaves out logic and motivation".[27] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times was an advocate of the film and scored it 3.5/4 stars, explaining: "I may disapprove of a movie for going too far, and yet have a sneaky regard for a movie that goes much, much farther than merely too far."[28] Taking the opposite view, Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune gave the film one out of four stars, decrying the film's "jolly cruelt[y]", and calling the film "cruddy and vile" and "witless",[29] and A.O. Scott of the New York Times went even further, calling the film "a worthless piece of garbage".[7]

Home media

The DVD and Blu-ray versions of Shoot 'Em Up were released on January 1, 2008 by New Line Home Entertainment.[30] The DVD version is presented in a widescreen aspect ratio, and Dolby Digital EX 5.1 and DTS-ES 6.1 Discrete audio[31] in contrast to the Blu-ray's DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 audio track.[32] Special features included a behind-the-scene footage entitled Ballet of Bullets; a seventeen-minute animatics and audio commentary from director Michael Davis; and deleted scenes and trailers of the film. Both the DVD and Blu-ray were well-received. Francis Rizzo III of DVD Talk gave the DVD version an overall rating of four (of five), praising its video and audio quality, and the special features.[31] High Def Digest gave the Blu-ray version a score of four (of five), praising both the 1080p transfer and DTS audio track.[32] New Line yet released another DVD and Blu-ray of the film, as a two-disc version on August 30, 2011.[33]

References

  1. ↑ "Shoot 'Em Up (2007)". British Board of Film Classification. Retrieved 21 March 2017.
  2. 1 2 3 "Shoot 'Em Up (2007)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2009-02-27.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Douglas, Edward. "Exclusive: Shoot ‘Em Up's Michael Davis". ComingSoon.net. CraveOnline. Retrieved 21 March 2017.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 "Shoot 'Em Up: Full Production Notes". Media Atlantis. Retrieved 21 March 2017.
  5. ↑ "Writers on Writing: Michael Davis on Shoot ‘Em Up". Script Magazine. 2 November 2015. Retrieved 21 March 2017.
  6. ↑ "Shoot 'Em Up Review, Preview, Photos, Posters, Trailers, Videos, Cast, Trivia, Quizzes, Box Office, News - WorstPreviews.com".
  7. 1 2 Scott, A.O. (2007-09-07). "Never Mind Those Bullets, a Newborn Needs Rescuing". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-09-07.
  8. ↑ "Shoot 'Em Up". Murph's Place. Retrieved 21 March 2017.
  9. ↑ Weintraub, Steve (5 September 2007). "Monica Bellucci Interview –Shoot 'Em Up". Collider.com. Retrieved 22 March 2017.
  10. ↑ "Bullet Proof Baby". Archived from the original on 9 October 2008.
  11. ↑ Bounty.com Mother tests out her 'bullet-proof' design
  12. ↑ The Daily Telegraph Australia Bulletproof babywear, a viral marketing gag
  13. ↑ Raising Kids Bullet-proof Baby Buggies
  14. ↑ DollyMix.com Mums gone mad
  15. ↑ Aftonbladet (in Swedish) Här skjuter hon - på sin baby
  16. ↑ "Shoot 'Em Up [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]". AllMusic. Retrieved 22 March 2017.
  17. ↑ "Shoot 'Em Up". Soundtrack.Net. Retrieved 22 March 2017.
  18. ↑ "Shoot 'Em Up Music from the Motion Picture". Amazon. Retrieved 22 March 2017.
  19. ↑ Fritz, Ben (2005-06-05). "Owen Targets "Shoot"". Variety.com. Retrieved 2007-08-22.
  20. ↑ "Quint" (2006-09-14). "Crazy Clive Owen/Paul Giamatti flick, SHOOT 'EM UP, tests! And...". Aintitcoolnews.com. Retrieved 2007-08-22.
  21. ↑ Henry Ham (2007-07-27). "Shoot 'Em Up Brings Down the House at Comic-Con". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2007-08-22.
  22. ↑ Gray, Brandon (10 September 2007). "3:10 to Yuma Arrives at Top Spot". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 22 March 2017.
  23. ↑ "Shoot 'Em Up". Rotten Tomatoes. 2007-09-08. Retrieved 2007-09-08.
  24. ↑ "Shoot 'Em Up (2007)". Metacritic. Retrieved 21 March 2017.
  25. ↑ Debruge, Peter (2007-07-31). "Shoot 'Em Up". Variety. Retrieved 2007-08-21.
  26. ↑ Frank Scheck (2007-08-20). "Shoot 'Em Up". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2007-08-22.
  27. ↑ Peter Travers (2007-09-04). "Shoot 'Em Up". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2007-09-06.
  28. ↑ Roger Ebert (6 September 2007). "Shoot 'em up".
  29. ↑ Michael Phillips (2007-09-07). "Shoot 'Em Up Misfires With A Hollow Point". The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 2007-09-07.
  30. ↑ "Shoot 'Em Up Caps Blu-ray". IGN. Retrieved 2007-10-25.
  31. 1 2 Rizzo III, Frank (24 December 2007). " Shoot 'Em Up". DVD Talk. Retrieved 22 March 2017.
  32. 1 2 "Shoot 'Em Up". High Def Digest. Retrieved 22 March 2017.
  33. ↑ "Shoot 'Em Up (2007): Releases". AllMovie. Retrieved 22 March 2017.
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