Shoot Me Up: Maybe THEN I'd enjoy it...

There comes a time in every man’s life when he must take a stand. A time in which drawing a line in the sand means everything, virtue is the foundation of courage and strength, and a reckless endangerment of self for the greater good means you will just plain GET THINGS DONE.

I watched Shoot em’ Up last week. And now I don’t believe anything good exists in the world. “Surely,” I thought to myself… “Surely, this isn’t a movie made by some terrible fanboy director who simply dreamed of making a movie with ‘all the ‘cool’ things you can do in a gunfight.”

Oh no he DI-IN’T!

If you're watching the video above, you're going to see a tween girl introduce some dude looking like a cheaper, geekier version of Steven Speilberg and the first thing out of his mouth is "Shoot Em' Up is all the cool things you can do in a gun fight..."

Now, I don't usually wish gun violence on anyone... even if I think it will do the world some good in the intelligence department. But damn would the irony be delicious.

Guess what Michael Davis… You’re not cool, the movie blew terribly, the violence got boring, and everything in it was a clichéd version of something I’d seen in other movies that were actually cool. Thank god it will only swallow Monica Bellucci’s career. Clive Owen, and Paul Giamatti are too good to care about this one. Somewhere in all that excess Michael Davis forgot why a gunfight was cool to begin with… All that other shit you had to go through to get there.

The Mexican standoff at the end of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly with the titular characters: Amazing. Why? Good question. They mostly just stand around and look at each other for literally 3 minutes before anyone draws their gun. Why is this suspenseful? Why is this affective? Why is this…cool? We.actualy.care.about.what’s.happening.

The standoff between Keanu (as himself) and the Agent Smith in The Matrix, Butch Cassidy and The Kid taking on the Bolivian Army, Kurt Russell fording the river in Tombstone simply REFUSING to die, any moment in The Untouchables, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, or the very end of Die Hard. All of these are great films with great action sequences that move the plot along and actually have meaning within the film. Plus we CARE about what's happening because we're not just watching "heroes doing their thing," but characters in great stories that mean something to us. If one of them dies, its a big deal. No one dies in Shoot em' Up because none of it matters to the plot at all...

But then there are those movies that have plots, but we all know its just a ruse to show us good gun battles. Like The Big Hit with Lou Diamond Phillips... Y'know... Before he did BATS and fell off the face of the earth.

Where could he be? Oh wait... I found him.

Shoot em' Up uses action as a distraction from the plot. Not because it doesn't have one... because it does... technically. But this "plot" basically serves to get us from one cocktail napkin idea to another... because that's what happens in cocktail napkin gimmick films. Whoever had the brilliant idea to begin with, sits down, has a couple gin martinis, a lap dance, and maybe a couple of grandpa's "idea pills," and starts writing down more things he thinks is clever onto cocktail napkins at whatever wanna-be-high-class strip joint he happens to reside on that particular Thursday night. The "plot" is the dried vomit and gin on whatever table Michael Davis happens to be slumped over, that holds down these cocktail napkins that say "Shoot bad guys while falling out of a plane" or "shoot bad guys while having sex" or "shoot bad guys at a playground" or "Kill a man with a carrot" or "Shoot a sign to make lewd suggestions" or "Use bullets to open doors" or "Have Supervillain with bullets for eyes" (He would later lose this one vomiting in a strip club stall).

Either way... the title basically gives away the ending. A first for everyone. Congrats, now you can skip this movie.

My suggestion to the all-knowing Michael Davis: Go back to doing what you do best. You started your career with writing the infinitely successful Double Dragon not to mention Prehysteria 2 and Prehysteria 3. I suggest writing a fourth Prehysteria... or a Double Dragon 2: Quadruple Dragon. Because I sincerely hope no one in their right mind will make the mistake New Line Cinema did, and let you raid the weapon prop department in a studio again and make another bomb like this one. Also... why didn't you come up with Prehysteria 1? Must've missed out on that money train.