Shoot 'Em Up is a 2007 action/thriller film written and directed by Michael Davis (Monster Man) and produced by Susan Montford and Don Murphy. The film was released on September 7, 2007.
When writer/director Michael Davis's original concept was passed on by movie studios, he put together a 17-minute reel of animated footage, consisting of 17,000 line drawings, in order to give studio heads an idea of how the action scenes would play out. This got the attention of New Line Cinema CEO, Bob Shaye, who approved the project and accepted Davis to direct. After signing Clive Owen and other actors, the film went into production in Toronto, Canada from February 13 to May 8, 2006. Though Variety inititally reported a planned release during the holiday season of 2006, and initial previews occured in September of that year, the film was eventually scheduled for release on September 7, 2007. Audience response at early screenings was reportedly mixed. The website Worstpreviews reported, "...the studio has screened it at several places with an overall audience response that it is nothing more than a big shoot-out....While many people do not see anything wrong with this, the problem is that the script started off with the shoot-outs and then had a plot thrown into it, and not the other way around." Audience response from a screening at 2007's San Diego Comic-Con was reportedly much better, however.
Film critics' views on the film were sharply divided. Variety called the movie "violent and vile in equal measure," but "too stylistically audacious to dismiss outright." Hollywood Reporter was more equivocal in its review, saying "Anyone looking for subtlety, character development or layered plotting will be disappointed, but action fans will find plenty to amuse them with this film that makes Hard Boiled look restrained," and that the film is "all very silly, but also undeniably fun...." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone praised the film (giving it three stars out of four) and called Shoot 'Em Up a "wet dream for action junkies [that] leaves out logic and motivation...." Taking the opposite view, Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune gave the film one out of four stars, decrying the film's "jolly cruelt[y]," and calling the film "cruddy and vile" and "witless", and A.O. Scott of the New York Times went even further, calling the film "a worthless piece of garbage".
As of September 7, 2007, the movie-review aggregating website RottenTomatoes.com lists Shoot 'Em Up with a "Tomatometer" rating of 71% ("fresh") based on 49 reviews, with an average critic's rating of 6.6/10. The "Cream of the Crop" on that site gives the film a 64% rating based on eleven reviews, with an average rating of 6.1/10.Wikipedia
