Shoot Em Up

Shoot Em Up is what I call a good bad movie. The story is flimsy, the dialog is cheesy, and the action sequences are so over the top that they are just down right ridiculous. All this aside(or perhaps because of it), I can't help but like this movie. Lets face it, this film wasn't made to be taken seriously, I mean after all its a throw back/parody of films like Rambo or Die Hard where one bad ass of a man takes on hordes of enemies singlehandedly with little more than a 9mm pistol and a well sharpened tongue (one-liners aplenty people).

Just to give a sample of how wonderfully over the top this movie is, the first person to die in the movie is killed with a carrot. That's right a carrot. There are two instances of direct carrocide in this film. In the first our hero,who is known only as Smith, somehow manages to shove a carrot right through the back of a man's skull within the first five minutes of the film. There are also several other instances of indirect carrocide where a carrot is used to hold down the triggers of guns (thats right he does this more than once).

The films plot is pretty much strait forward action movie plot, I'll try not to spoil anything for anyone that hasn't seen it yet as I describe this. It starts out with our typical wrong place at the wrong time type scenario. Mr. Smith (played by Clive Owen) is for unknown reasons relaxing on a bench in a seedy looking area eating a carrot when a pregnant woman runs past him who is being pursued by a man with a gun. Mr. Smith saves the woman, and then after a shoot out while delivering the womans baby, he tires to help them escape. The mother is killed in the process, so now Mr. Smith is stuck with this baby who a man named Hertz (Paul Giamatti) is trying to kill (thats right they are trying to kill the baby). The rest of the movie is spent following Smith and his lactating prostitute/love intrerest/damsel in distress named Donna Quintano (Monica Bellucci) as they attempt to figure out why on earth anyone would want to kill this baby. All the while avoiding/duking it out with Hertz and his seemingly endless supply of henchmen. To find out the rest, go watch the movie.

Casting for Shoot 'Em Up is pretty spot on. Clive Owen's "Smith" is pretty much the same as the character he played in Sin City, a wise cracking cliche bad-ass who is both bitter and jaded, yet has a heart of gold. This role was pretty perfect for Owen, and I haven't really seen him play as anything but this type of character.

The Character that stole the show for me, however, was Hertz. Paul Giamatti makes a surprisingly good villain, he's twisted, intelligent, and a complete prick, and the constant phone calls from his wife about his son's birthday was a very nice touch and led to some of the funnier moments in the film.

Donna, Monica Bellucci's role, was really quite... blah. But, in action movies like this one female leads are generally there to be hot, not deep. So, I guess that doesn't really matter. The one nice character touch they did throw in for her was that she would swear in Italian when mad.

A note on the action. The action scenes are great, they are what you would expect from a film of this nature: bloody, long, and many. Also as the movie goes along each scene tries to out do the last. Smith fights while delivering a baby, having sex and while jumping from an airplane to name a few.

All in all, I'll say this it's not the best movie you'll ever see, and it's no masterpiece, but if you take it for what it is (a "shoot 'em up" action movie) you will enjoy it. But, if you are looking for a deeper level action type movie where thinking might actually be required, go rent Reservoir Dogs because Shoot 'Em Up will just disappoint you.

30 Days of Night

I just watched 30 Days of Night, and I really liked it. I'm glad it was good because this was like my 4th attempt to watch the thing. All the copies they seem to have here in Zibo seem to have a messed up sound track that is all crackley. Finally I just downloaded it (arrrr I'm a pirate!). The copy I got was really nice quality too.

The movie is based on a graphic novel/comic book that I'm going to have to pick up because the art looks pretty cool. It's a vampire story set in Alaska. The movie is set in a small isolated Alaskan town that receives no sunlight for a whole month (30 days), and has such harsh winters that for this month most of the towns folk leave (reducing the population from about 500 to 200) before the final sunset. The only communication with the outside world during this month is through phones/internet. There is a single chopper that can still leave in an emergency. Unfortunately for the town just before the winter someone steals and destroys all the cellphones, the helicopter is sabotaged, and all the sled dogs are killed. Eventually, as people start dying all power and phone lines are cut off. The movie then becomes a survival/hunt story following a small group of protagonist (which includes Josh Hartnett as the town sheriff and Melissa George as an ex-flame of Hartnett/fire marshal who gets conveniently stuck in the town before winter). The best part of the movie, however, is the vampires. They are rather different from your traditional vampire in that while they do have the thirst for blood, and seem to share the same strengths and weaknesses of normal vampires,they don't act like your classic Vampire. They aren't the traditional Gothic sex symbols you see them as in most vampire flicks,instead they are far more feral/instinctual and driven almost wholly by their thirst for blood. They seem to have lost most of their humanity with their curse (or affliction what ever you want to call it). They do still think,however,and talk. The main/older vampires seemed to speak Latin or some language like that, while the newly turned ones still spoke English. They also set traps and such for the protagonist further demonstrating that there was a method to their madness, making them that much scarier. The ending will probably be a point of debate to some people, I personally like how they did the final fight/ending, but I can see how some people will find it incredibly cheesy. Remember this was based on a comic book though and it IS a vampire movie at heart (two stereotypically cheezy things) before you get too disappointed.

Now, I'm not saying classic Vampires are lame, but it sure was a nice change of pace. Sometimes Vampires are over glorified in my opinion or made to seem too pretty and nice with some minor (or major) sadistic undertones. This sometimes makes them too human and relateable (well minus the whole blood drinking thing), and while this works for some movies such as underworld where the Vampires are the good guys, it falls short with others. It was good to see truly scary/monster type vampires in 30 days.