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Shoot 'Em Up
This film looked like it had potential. Potential be a pretty stupid film, but a film that used its action correctly and be very entertaining with the action and witty dialog. It managed to pull of the dialog quite well, but as a whole, this wasn't a good film.
I'll start off commenting on the good part, the dialog, mainly from Paul Giamatti was very good. Delivered well and well written in the sarcastic and condescending way that his character speaks. Some of his lines were brilliant. They aren't all witty one liners, but a lot of the time some absurd philosophy/thoughts on life. Clive Owen also got in on the act at times when he and Giamatti were conversing with one another.
Other then that there wasn't all that much good about it. The action was fairly entertaining, but at no point in time did I actually care about the action. It seemed for the most part pointless and absurd. There were a few good action sequences, but when a film is so heavily based around action sequences, they need to do a better job with them, then they do. Compared to another bad film with action sequences, Crank, the action in Shoot 'Em Up was pretty pedestrian.
Also, the story was terrible in this film. I want to use the Crank comparison again here. In Crank you actually cared a little about the character and the story, whereas in Shoot 'Em Up there was nothing about this terrible film that made you want to care about the lead character. For the whole first half (possibly two-thirds) of the film there was no character development, so while you knew about what was going on, and what the protaganist was trying to do to/protect from the antagonist, it really didn't matter. Also, besides the dialog, there was nothing to attach any character to the audience so that one actually cared about them.
Overall this film is simply an excuse to use a whole lot of absurd action. There are better films at doing this then this film, and if it weren't for the dialog of Giamatti, this film wouldn't be worth watching at all. I still wouldn't really recommend it, though.
Overall Grade: D+
Acting: D-
Story: D-
Audio/Visual: C
This film looked like it had potential. Potential be a pretty stupid film, but a film that used its action correctly and be very entertaining with the action and witty dialog. It managed to pull of the dialog quite well, but as a whole, this wasn't a good film.
I'll start off commenting on the good part, the dialog, mainly from Paul Giamatti was very good. Delivered well and well written in the sarcastic and condescending way that his character speaks. Some of his lines were brilliant. They aren't all witty one liners, but a lot of the time some absurd philosophy/thoughts on life. Clive Owen also got in on the act at times when he and Giamatti were conversing with one another.
Other then that there wasn't all that much good about it. The action was fairly entertaining, but at no point in time did I actually care about the action. It seemed for the most part pointless and absurd. There were a few good action sequences, but when a film is so heavily based around action sequences, they need to do a better job with them, then they do. Compared to another bad film with action sequences, Crank, the action in Shoot 'Em Up was pretty pedestrian.
Also, the story was terrible in this film. I want to use the Crank comparison again here. In Crank you actually cared a little about the character and the story, whereas in Shoot 'Em Up there was nothing about this terrible film that made you want to care about the lead character. For the whole first half (possibly two-thirds) of the film there was no character development, so while you knew about what was going on, and what the protaganist was trying to do to/protect from the antagonist, it really didn't matter. Also, besides the dialog, there was nothing to attach any character to the audience so that one actually cared about them.
Overall this film is simply an excuse to use a whole lot of absurd action. There are better films at doing this then this film, and if it weren't for the dialog of Giamatti, this film wouldn't be worth watching at all. I still wouldn't really recommend it, though.
Overall Grade: D+
Acting: D-
Story: D-
Audio/Visual: C