I’m with stupid.
I have just watched probably one of the stupidest films ever.
Except… let me just stop there, for a quick interjection of honesty. In actuality I haven’t just watched this film. Instead I saw it a couple of nights ago. See how I’m deceiving you and trying to increase the emphasis on stupidity by suggesting that I immediately needed to rush off and blog about it? You’re just absolutely reliant on the honesty of my reporting, aren’t you? I could tell you almost anything and you’d have no idea how true it was. Admittedly, I’d struggle to get away with spinning a tale of a night of passion with Scarlett Johansson (it was actually Angelina Jolie), but for all you know I might be sitting here with my underpants on my head making up every last word as imaginary butterflies spray rainbows through the air.
But despite the temptations, I will try always to be honest, good and truthful, so let’s start again.
Two nights ago, I watched probably one of the stupidest films ever. My grammatically correct heart here wants to write ‘most stupid’, but ’stupidest’ just rings better – you can imagine Elmer Fudd expelling a shower of saliva as he says it.
The title of this film is Shoot ‘Em Up, not an auspicious start if you’re looking for something like a searing portrait of working class life set against the background of the miners’ strikes. But I wasn’t looking for that, because it would be tremendously dull.
It is effectively 83 minutes of the most ridiculously unlikely rolling gun battles and violence with nary a pause for breath. In a bold move, the director has chosen to use the money that would usually be wasted on things like screenwriters and plots to buy in a lorryload of blank bullets and an army of extras whose sole purpose is to die incredibly swiftly. How stupid is it? Well, the lead character, played by Clive Owen, kills someone with a carrot. Repeatedly.
Obviously, Shoot ‘Em Up is brilliant. It is the epitome of mindless entertainment, and there are times when that’s all you need. Switch on television, switch off brain, enjoy, pausing only to wipe the little stream of dribble from the corner of your slackly hanging mouth.
I have a certain fondness for that kind of film – it’s the same joyous cavalcade of stunts that you get in practically every Jackie Chan film. Or in Crank for that matter, which is basically Speed but with Jason Statham playing the bus – if his heart-rate goes below a certain level, he dies. (Funnily enough, if my heart-rate goes below a certain level, I die too, but the point is that he’s got to keep his rate very high. It fails to make any more sense in the movie either, so don’t worry.)
So, you should watch Shoot ‘Em Up if you can. You’ll never admit to anyone that you enjoyed it, and those brain cells won’t grow back, but you can have fun telling everyone quite how stupid it is.