Smith is a drifter and a former black-ops soldier who gets pulled into a fight he never asked for. That’s the setup for Shoot ‘Em Up, and it’s a simple one. The film doesn’t waste time on exposition. It starts with a pregnant woman running from a hitman, and within minutes Smith has killed the hitman, delivered a baby during a shootout, and found himself protecting a newborn from an army of gunmen.
Michael Davis wrote and directed the film, and he clearly wanted to make a movie about guns. The premise comes from a scene Davis saw in Hard Boiled, where Chow Yun-fat rescues newborn babies from gangsters. Davis expanded that into a script in 2000, complete with 17,000 hand-drawn images for the action sequences. The film was produced by Montford/Murphy, filmed in Toronto, and scored by Paul Haslinger. The cinematography was handled by Peter Pau and the editing by Peter Amundson.
Trailer, via NewLine.
Smith, the Carrot-Eater
Clive Owen plays Smith, a man who walks through the world without much care for anyone else. He eats carrots constantly, which Davis says is an homage to the Man with No Name from Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns. The character’s coldness comes from Davis’s own frustration. In 1989, Davis wrote a script about Alfred Kinsey that never became a feature film, and that failure shaped the way Smith treats everyone around him.
Smith’s research into human sexuality also inspired the character of Donna Quintano, played by Monica Bellucci. She’s a prostitute with a heart of gold, and she becomes his eventual love interest. The film presents her as a woman who has seen the worst of the world and still finds room for kindness. Her arc moves from reluctant ally to full partner, and Bellucci sells the shift with a mix of toughness and tenderness that grounds the film’s otherwise absurd action.
Hertz and the BTK Connection
Paul Giamatti plays Hertz, a former FBI profiler who now works as an assassin and a family man. He’s the kind of villain who keeps a normal life while doing terrible things behind closed doors. According to co-producer Susan Montford, the character was modeled after the BTK Killer. That comparison holds up. Hertz is methodical, patient, and utterly without mercy when he decides someone stands in his way.
The feud between Smith and Hertz has been compared to Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd in Looney Tunes. Smith spends a great deal of time eating carrots in the film, just as Bugs does. Davis acknowledged that the Looney Tunes reference was deliberate. It’s a small joke, but it fits the tone of a movie that wants to be both serious and silly at once.
The Baby at the Center
The baby is the reason Smith fights. He delivers the child during a shootout, and when the mother is killed, he tries to abandon the baby in a park. That plan fails when a woman walking by is shot by Hertz’s sniper rifle. Smith then tries to leave the baby with Donna, but Hertz shows up at the brothel and tortures her for information. Smith returns and kills Hertz’s men, then shoots Hertz himself. Hertz survives because he wears a bulletproof vest.
The baby, whom Smith names Oliver, becomes the focus of the entire plot. Smith realizes that Oliver stops crying when he hears heavy metal music, which leads him to conclude that Oliver’s mother lived near a heavy metal club. That clue sends Smith and Donna on a chase through the city, searching for answers about why the baby was targeted.
The Apartment and the Sperm Samples
Smith and Donna eventually find an apartment with medical equipment, two dead pregnant women, and several dead security guards. They observe that the apartment has been storing sperm samples from a single person, which means the women were artificially inseminated to give birth to matching bone marrow donors for that person. This is the film’s central mystery, and it explains why Hertz has been hunting the baby: the baby carries the marrow needed to save a powerful man’s life.
The revelation is a twist that lands because the film has spent its runtime building toward it. Smith’s investigation isn’t just random violence; it’s a search for meaning. He wants to know who wanted the baby dead and why. The answer, when it comes, is grim but logical.
The Hotel Scene and the Final Fight
The film’s climax happens in a hotel, where Smith and Donna finally get some quiet together. They have sex, and the moment feels earned after everything they’ve been through. Then the professional team of agents arrives to clean up the scene, and Smith and Donna have to fight their way out.
The final fight is a chaotic mess of gunfire, explosions, and narrow escapes. It’s the kind of action sequence that the film earns through its earlier set pieces, and it delivers on the promise of the title. There’s nothing subtle about Shoot ‘Em Up, and the ending respects that.
What Works and What Doesn’t
The film is at its best when it’s moving fast and letting the violence play out. The shootouts are kinetic, the editing is sharp, and the performances are committed enough to sell the chaos. Clive Owen plays Smith with a cool detachment that makes the character feel dangerous even when he’s eating carrots. Monica Bellucci brings warmth to Donna, and their chemistry carries the quieter moments between the action.
Where the film stumbles is in its pacing. Some scenes drag, particularly the stretches where Smith is investigating clues or talking to witnesses. The film is 86 minutes long, but it can feel longer because of how it handles its middle section. The Looney Tunes comparison holds in spirit, but the execution sometimes falls short of the joke.
The film also leans heavily on its own excess. The violence is relentless, and there’s a point where the sheer amount of gunfire becomes numbing rather than exciting. That’s a risk of this kind of action film, and Shoot ‘Em Up doesn’t always manage to keep the audience engaged through the chaos.
“Just another family man making a living.”
That tagline sums up Hertz’s character perfectly. He’s a family man who makes his living through violence, and the film treats that contradiction with a kind of grim humor. It’s a film about a man who protects a baby, and it’s also a film about the lengths people will go to survive.
The Critical Reception
Before its September 2007 release, Shoot ‘Em Up was previewed at that year’s San Diego Comic-Con and received a positive response. Despite a mediocre commercial performance, recouping less than its budget, the critical reception was mixed-to-favorable. The film didn’t become a major hit, but it found an audience that appreciated its willingness to commit fully to its own ridiculous premise.
The film’s score sits at 4.9 out of 10. That number reflects the film’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s a movie that knows exactly what it is, but it doesn’t always execute on its promises. The action is fun, the performances are strong, and the story is clever, but the pacing and the excess hold it back from greatness.
A Review in Brief
Shoot ‘Em Up is a film about a man who finds himself protecting a baby from an assassin, and it takes that premise and runs with it. Clive Owen and Monica Bellucci anchor a cast that sells the stakes of a chase that could have felt empty. The film’s action is its strongest asset, and its weakest moments come from pacing issues that slow down what should be a lean, mean thrill ride.
The film’s score of 4.9 out of 10 reflects this balance. It’s a film that succeeds when it commits to its own rules and falters when it loses sight of them. It’s a movie worth seeing for its ambition, even if that ambition doesn’t always pay off.
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