‘Shoot ‘Em Up’ hits the mark with action scenes

In theaters

SHOOT ‘EM UP Written and directed by Michael Davis, 82 minutes, rated R.

Here is a good example of what happens if you were favored to be the next James Bond, but then were overlooked for the role.

If you’re Clive Owen, for example, who must have a subversive sense of humor, you show up to star in a movie that features as much ingenious action as you would find in a Bond film, but without the good taste, the good manners and the swank locales that tend to inspire daydreams of extended travel abroad.

Nothing in writer and director Michael Davis’ “Shoot ‘Em Up” will prompt such longings because nothing here is as intoxicatingly beautiful as, say, Montenegro was in “Casino Royale.” Instead, there’s only the filth of a crime underbelly that is somewhat eye-opening in just how base that underbelly can be.

This swift, rank, enjoyably dark movie presses against so many limits, it achieves the threshold of a new limit. It likely will offend plenty, but most of those folks won’t be in on the joke the movie courts. With its tongue planted firmly in cheek, “Shoot ‘Em Up” has its gut in grindhouse, though with superior production values and a somewhat larger budget. It’s a live-action cartoon, a fact Davis underscores throughout since he employs carrots so often as instruments of death.

The film stars Owen as Smith, who is minding his business one day eating a carrot when along comes a pregnant woman rushing past him in a state of duress.

Following her is a tough guy with a gun who obviously has plans to kill her. Since for Smith this won’t do, he intervenes, which leads to a dramatic series of events that finds the woman giving birth while gun-wielding assailants assail them both.

Let’s just say it’s a memorable scene (you don’t want to know how Smith cuts the umbilical cord), but when one of the stray bullets strikes the woman dead in the forehead, Smith is left at a crossroads. Should this gruff loner leave the child to die, or should he scoop it up and be saddled with it for the rest of the movie?

Naturally, he does the latter, which proves significant for a few reasons, the main one being that plenty of people want to get their hands on that baby, chief among them the hit man Hertz (Paul Giamatti). The reason won’t be revealed here – it would spoil a plot that already is dangerously thin – but safe to say that political reasons are involved, as they tend to be these days.

With Monica Bellucci as the lactating hooker who leaves her fetish-hungry clients to join Smith so she can feed the baby (and smolder with Smith in a romantic subplot), the movie bulldozes forward. It’s only 82 minutes long, but it’s filled with so many raw, infectious gunfights, it comfortably earns its title as it cuts its bloody swath across the screen.

Watching the movie, it’s safe to assume that rarely, if ever, has a newborn child, fake or not, been used in ways that it’s used here. What ensues will horrify some, but since “Shoot ‘Em Up” is designed with a core audience in mind (Tarantino junkies) it succeeds in serving that audience and likely will delight them with a toxic thrill.

Grade: B

On HD DVD

ELIZABETH Directed by Shekhar Kapur, written by Michael Hirst, 124 minutes, rated R.

With “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” set for release Oct. 12, now is the time to revisit the film that inspired it – 1998’s “Elizabeth.” Whether you do so by standard DVD or on Universal’s terrific new high definition HD DVD transfer, it’s impossible to go wrong with either.

From Michael Hirst’s script, “Elizabeth” is an expertly acted, brooding melodrama that features Queen Elizabeth I as one staunch, formidable virgin, as Cate Blanchett explores to bewitching success in her Academy Award-nominated performance.

As King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn’s daughter, Blanchett plays Elizabeth as a passionate free spirit hardened by her cold blue bloodline, the ruthless machinations of a court in upheaval, and the tremendous rush for power that undermines it all.

Compressing and rewriting history at will, the film takes great liberties in an effort to put on a good show, which it does – royally.

Beginning with the burning of three Protestant “heretics,” the film comes alive in its frequent beheadings, bloody division of two churches (Roman Catholic and Protestant), and the ascension of one tough, indomitable, 25-year-old woman who surfaces in director Kapur’s hands as one formidable presence.

Indeed, with the odds stacked against her, Elizabeth successfully fights off the Spanish, the French, her rivals and the pope, while at the same time carrying on a torrid love affair with the buff Robert Dudley (Joseph Fiennes).

This is not the rigid, unflinching Queen Elizabeth I Bette Davis played in 1955’s “The Virgin Queen,” or even the cool, knowing queen Judi Dench plays to great effect in “Shakespeare in Love.” Blanchett’s queen is more or less like Helen Mirren’s version in last year’s Emmy Award-winning HBO miniseries, “Elizabeth I.” She’s sexy, smart and unafraid to live it up, even while it’s clear that those around her want her dead.

Too bad for them – by film’s end, their heads are mounted on stakes, whereas Elizabeth’s is merely shaved partly bald. Swearing off men altogether, she completes her metamorphosis from naive young woman to full, regal queen by reclaiming her virginity with five measured words: “I am married to England,” she declares, and goes on to fulfill a spectacular 44-year reign.

Grade: A-

Visit www.weekinrewind.com, the archive of Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s reviews, which appear Mondays, Fridays and weekends in Lifestyle, as well as on bangordailynews.com. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.