here is my review for "Shoot 'Em Up" as edited by the Record, with revisions (also deemed unacceptable for publishing).

Shoot 'Em Up

Alex Wilgus Staff Writer

Even if you're only a moderate moviegoer, you've seen a good gunfight. Director Michael Davis knows that. However, in his new film, "Shoot 'Em Up," he poses an intriguing question you may not have considered: have you seen a gunfight whilst the hero is also busy delivering a baby?

This is merely the first scene and to give any more details away about the films numerous proceeding action scenes would spoil one of the two entertaining things the film has to offer viewers.

The first thing that "Shoot 'Em Up" explores is just about every possible thing you could be doing when a gunfight breaks out. The other thing is just how many things can be done using a 9mm and an unlimited supply of clips.

Clive Owen stars as a mysterious bystander who saves a newborn child from a gang of ruthless gunmen. Unlike his character in "Children of Men," Owen gets to have some fun while saving a baby from a hail of bullets, this time by turning an arsenal of his own ammunition on a slew of hapless bad guys.

Monica Belucci plays his love interest, a prostitute, and surrogate mother of the child. Paul Giamatti plays the villain. These roles will not win any of these actors any praise, but it is hardly their faults.

Davis's script is so boring that only the most experienced actor could pull an interesting performance out of the lines given him. In this case it is Giamatti who plays a very fun and darkly humorous bad guy. Owen is his usual deadpan and sorely lacking in the mystique that shrouded past action heroes like Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson. As for Belucci, she is there solely for aesthetic purposes, so it would be unfair to judge her on any thespian level.

Obviously, a film called "Shoot 'Em Up" is not meant to satisfy any sort of artistic intelligentsia. It's a dumb action movie just like the title, so I'll skip past the glaring complaints of how unrealistic the whole thing is and go straight to the point. Shoot 'Em Up is overly violent, overly sexual and lacking in style. It simply does not live up to its recent predecessors in the genre of super-violent action flicks.

This is not a proud admittance, but I did develop a certain cinematic respect for films like Sin City, Kill Bill, and 300 whose visual stimuli were drawn not only from scenes of cartoony violence, but a unique stylistic vision, that used special effects not only to make people's limbs fly off, but to create a context in which such ridiculousness seems plausible.

Davis claims he drew stylistic influence from Bugs Bunny cartoons, a reference that is not so subtle since Clive Owen eats a whole carrot every other scene and Giamatti is given lines like "you wascawy wabbit." This could have been interesting if the references weren't so blunt.

Despite the director's commentary, the film still feels more influenced by more base media. Anyone who has played first-person-shooter video games like "Goldeneye," "Time Crisis" or "Max Payne" will recognize Davis's "artistic vision."

The other annoying thing is that the plot actually involves an anti-gun element. This was probably meant to be clever or ironic, but it comes across as clumsy and stupid.

In the end "Shoot' Em Up" has little to offer. In fact, maybe the only good thing "Shoot 'Em Up" does is to inadvertently show the hypocrisy of human nature when it comes to violence. Davis bombards the audience with a heavy amount of glorified gun-blazing then tries to take a moral high ground about abstaining from the very violence that is the film's centerpiece. One of Owen's lines in the film actually addresses the problem perfectly: "Don't trust anyone who stands to profit from something, they're the bad guys". Maybe Davis should take that quote to heart.

For me this was an interesting opportunity to examine my own Christian convictions about violence. I believe pointless violence to be wrong, but I realized while watching "Shoot 'Em Up" that I tend to find such violence on film incredibly entertaining. What is it about violence that is so appealing? Even those of us who cognitively deny its value are still entranced by it. I recall nights when I and my friends would divide over the theological issue of 'Just war" and how far the commandment "Thou Shalt Not Kill" extends, and another night all joining together in the Fischer basement to watch Kiefer Sutherland rip a guy's throat out in the latest episode of 24. For marty, despite beliefs to the contrary, violence is still a libidinal fascination, and "Shoot 'Em Up" stands to profit from it.