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Websters defines a “shoot’em up” as a “movie, television show, or computer game with much shooting and bloodshed.” In the simplest of terms, this film is exactly that. Writer/Director Michael Davis basically thought up the most ridiculous circumstances for a shootout (while delivering a baby, having sex and skydiving were the obvious choices) and then formed an interesting, if unbelievable plot around those moments. What results is like a John Woo movie on crack, with non-stop action, cheesy but deliciously quotable one-liners and bad ass performances that make up for the just plain bad plot.
Shoot ‘Em Up begins along a deserted street where Mr. Smith (Clive Owen), a jaded loner who hates just about everyone (especially people who don’t signal or slurp their coffee), notices an extremely pregnant mother chased down by a gun-toting bad guy. Armed with only a carrot (his favorite snack), Mr. Smith plays the reluctant hero, telling the bad guy to “Eat your vegetables” as he shoves the carrot full on through his throat. Already the film has set the cartoonish violence bar very high. As the woman goes into labor, Smith helps deliver the baby while using her gun to ward off the rest of the goons. The shootout ends when the mother takes a bullet in the crown, leaving Smith with the innocent child.
Not your typical family man, Smith enlists the help of a lactating prostitute Donna Quintana (Monica Bellucci) or DQ for short (yes the Dairy Queen pun comes back later), to help care for the baby as he fends off a seemingly endless supply of goons courtesy of uber-villain Hertz (Paul Giamatti). Meanwhile, Smith slowly unravels a convoluted political plot involving an ill presidential candidate, a “baby factory,” and a large gun corporation. It’s best to ignore all the preposterous details and just concentrate on the main points: Smith has baby, Hertz wants baby dead, Smith and Hertz try to kill each other, 87 minutes of movie fun ensues.
If you’re not a fan of suspending disbelief to watch a character miraculously avoid getting shot while using MacGyver-like skills to turn ordinary objects into murder accessories, then you probably should skip Shoot ‘Em Up. With all its highly stylized action sequences, the film wastes no time on character development or believability and even some of the shootouts fall flat (e.g. the skydiving sequence….literally). But for those action-junkies looking for cool characters, innovative shots (both with a gun and camera), and some memorable dialogue, there is little to complain about. Clive Owen is perfectly cast as Mr. Smith (who else could make shoving a carrot through someone’s eye so unbelievably sexy?), while Paul Giamatti’s villainous Hertz is simply delightful.
Ultimately, what the film lacks in story it makes up for in sheer entertainment value and with such a short runtime, the film ends before that runs out. Head into Shoot ‘Em Up prepared for ridiculous violence and some very poor taste… also be prepared to laugh at said violence and taste. If you can appreciate the film as a stylized tribute to action classics like Woo’s Hard Boiled, you won’t be disappointed. If not, well, no one has a gun pointed at your head, which is more than we can say for Smith.
There’s something you need to know about The Nanny Diaries right off the bat. It’s not a comedy. I know, you’ve seen the film’s cutesy poster with Scarlett Johansson in a potentially comedic position next to her “awww” inspiring little ward; and you’ve seen the commercials with their lighthearted, potentially funny music and awkward situations. This is not that movie. There is not a single laugh anywhere in it, and if there’s supposed to be then the film does an awful job of delivering. No, there’s nothing funny about The Nanny Diaries and I’m going to go ahead here and give them the benefit of the doubt by assuming that, advertising to the contrary, there’s not supposed to be.
Instead The Nanny Diaries has more in common with last year’s Oscar contender Little Children than it does with any kind of rom-com, minus of course the pedophile. In much the same way that Little Children was narrated by an omniscient voice delivering pithy, distant observations; Johansson narrates The Nanny Diaries as if she’s reading a diary she’s written from the perspective of an anthropologist in the middle of a grand social experiment.
Except it isn’t a social experiment or anything nearly so noble. Johansson plays Annie Braddock, a recent college grad who falls into nannying because she’s afraid to live in the real world and most of all, afraid to tell her mother that she doesn’t want to become a boring, corporate muckity-muck. Annie Braddock is afraid of her own life, and though when she moves out of her Mom’s place and into the city she seems to exalt in the freedom that comes with not being at home, she turns right around and throws herself into a situation with even less freedom by becoming a live-in Nanny for a rich, self-absorbed, absent mother who treats her as if she’s a personal slave. Nanny Annie narrates a lot about how much she’s bothered by the way she’s treated, but while her narration protests she simply stands around and takes it, muttering platitudes and “yes maam’s” as if she’s a dog who’s been beaten.
To me, that’s the biggest problem with The Nanny Diaries. It’s hard to watch Annie without dismissing her as simply weak or cowardly. She’s not a bad person, but she’s an empty vessel who seems willing to be pushed and prodded in whatever direction her overbearing employers/slave masters want her to go, while making excuses for her own complicity in their awful behavior as parents. For most of the movie she’s not motivated to do anything or become anything. She barely has a personality. Annie’s employer Mrs. X thrusts her into the role of societal inferior and she accepts it gladly, bumbling around at doing what she’s told, only breaking out of her meek servitude when she’s forced to by circumstances beyond her control.
I guess I’m saying that I don’t know what The Nanny Diaries is about. If it’s about Annie, well that’s a problem since she’s not interesting enough to serve as the focus for this, or any other movie. If it’s about the selfish, wealthy, bad parents of high-society; then my answer is: who cares. Personally, I think The Nanny Diaries is all about trying to be cute, and anything else that happens in it is merely ancillary. It succeeds at that. The film is frequently cute because even at her worst Scarlett Johansson is pretty cute and so is the kid she’s stuck paling around with. Sadly, the movie doesn’t manage much else. Its message, if there is one, is muddled and even with all the heavy handed narration to tell us what we’re supposed to be thinking, it’s hard to figure out why we’re supposed to want to be watching. Still, the film isn’t entirely unentertaining. For at least some of its running time it’ll keep your attention while you try to figure out where it goes. At worst, Scarlett Johansson is fun to look at, even if she doesn’t seem to know what to do with this flaccid character. But Annie’s resolution is unsatisfying and feels tacked on, while the trip to get there is even less than the sum of the film as whole.
Websters defines a “shoot’em up” as a “movie, television show, or computer game with much shooting and bloodshed.” In the simplest of terms, this film is exactly that. Writer/Director Michael Davis basically thought up the most ridiculous circumstances for a shootout (while delivering a baby, having sex and skydiving were the obvious choices) and then formed an interesting, if unbelievable plot around those moments. What results is like a John Woo movie on crack, with non-stop action, cheesy but deliciously quotable one-liners and bad ass performances that make up for the just plain bad plot.
