Mr. Smith, the angriest, most hardboiled man in the world, finds himself entrusted to protect the most innocent thing of all--a newborn child. When Smith delivers the baby in the middle of a gunfight, he soon discovers that the infant is the target of a shadowy force that has sent a team of mysterious and endless assailants, led by Hertz, to erase all traces of the baby. Amid a hail of bullets and facing every conceivable permutation of gunfight, Smith teams up with a prostitute named DQ to solve the mystery as to why the baby’s life is being threatened before this makeshift family all ends up on the wrong side of a bullet. Everyone wants the baby dead. The big question is why?

This is a film that many people might not get or might not understand. The film is and intentionally so about Bugs Bunny. When you watch a Bugs Bunny cartoon you seem him torturing and endlessly getting the better of Elmer Fudd. The film takes it to the next level of that dynamic. The film is big screen versions of Elmer and Bugs based in our world full of violence and what it would be like if Bugs and Elmer were real people. Clive Owen is Bugs Bunny and Paul Giamitti is Elmer Fudd and Shoot ‘em Up is like an adult film version of the those old Warner Brothers cartoons we use to watch and love. Acme has been replaced by real bullets and real guns and those two old foes battle it out in epic firefight after epic firefight. Clive Owen even munches his fair share of carrots along the way as he foils Giamitti time and time again.

I loved this film, the movie takes no pretense to what it is. It makes no apology for being a silly, crazy action packed gun fight. The entire time the movie has that tongue in cheek humor you could find in Bugs Bunny cartoons and it’s not sorry to be what it is. In a world of popcorn flicks where the films take themselves so seriously, where every explosion and gunfight is supposed to feel so real and most times actually feels like a cartoon where CGI has taken the place of animation Shoot ‘em Up makes no pretenses as to what it is and has fun doing so. Gun fights while following out of an airplane, while having sex and not even bothering to stop having sex, death by carrot the film takes that cartoon CGI violence to the next level and has fun doing so.

Clive Owen has to be one of my favorite actors working today in Hollywood. It’s almost impossible to find a Clive Owen film I don’t like and even in ones that I hated like King Arthur I have to admit Owen did a great job. He just has a screen presence that reminds me of some of those old Hollywood stars like Cary Grant that were bigger than the screen, larger than life and who you can’t help but find yourself rooting for. He’s rarely plays the villain because its hard to see him as a villain, he’s the kind of guy you want to like, he has charisma and charm and you can’t help but be drawn into his characters. He pulls of Mr. Smith to perfection in this film, he’s not perfect but we still want to root for him.

His counterpart Paul Giamatti is another actor that I think is seriously underrated but he is quickly correcting that assumption. He is the perfect Elmer Fudd for this movie, he has that over the top bad guy persona that works. He is the kind of guy you can see as the bad guy, someone who would want to kill a baby because of its implications and also as the bumbling and stumbling kind of bad guy that Clive Owen so easily gets the better of. The movie is a riot, its funny in the tongue in cheek kind of way and it is so much fun to watch as the action sequences are very cartoon like and the movie doesn’t care if you notice, heck they might be more offended if you didn't notice.

Grade: B+