Shoot ‘Em Up (2007)
Shoot ‘Em Up is a 2007 American romantic action thriller film written and directed by Michael Davis. It stars Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti, Monica Bellucci, and Stephen McHattie. The film follows Smith (Owen), a drifter who rescues a newborn from being killed by assassin Hertz (Giamatti) and his henchmen. Smith flees from the gang, enlisting the help of prostitute Donna Quintano (Bellucci) to keep the baby safe as he unravels the conspiracy. According to Davis, the idea for the film came about after he saw a gun-battle scene from John Woo’s critically acclaimed Hard Boiled in which Chow Yun-fat rescues newborn babies from gangsters. Desiring to make an action film centering on guns, he expanded the idea into a screenplay in 2000, accompanied by an animated footage with 17,000 drawings for the action scenes. After a deal with New Line Cinema, filming began in Toronto. The film was photographed by Hong Kong cinematographer Peter Pau. Before its September 2007 release, the film was previewed at that year’s San Diego Comic-Con and received a positive response.RELATED:
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Plot.
At a bus stop in a rough part of town, a carrot-eating drifter and military veteran named Smith sees a pregnant woman on the verge of giving birth while fleeing a hitman. Following them into a warehouse, Smith kills the hitman by stabbing him in the face with a carrot and retrieves the woman’s pistol. As more thugs, led by a ruthless man named Hertz, arrive, the woman goes into labor and Smith delivers her baby boy during a shootout. Pursued by Hertz, the woman is shot dead; Smith narrowly escapes with the newborn. Leaving the baby in a park, Smith hopes someone will adopt the child, but a passing woman is killed with a shot from Hertz’s sniper rifle. Realizing that Hertz is trying to kill the baby, Smith saves him and tries unsuccessfully to leave him with a prostitute named Donna Quintano.
Hertz soon arrives at the brothel and tortures Donna for information; Smith returns and kills Hertz’s henchmen. After a brief confrontation, Smith shoots Hertz and leaves with Donna and the baby. Having secretly worn a bulletproof vest, however, Hertz is alive albeit wounded. Taking Donna to his hideout, Smith realizes that the baby (whom he names Oliver) stops crying when he hears heavy metal music; he concludes that Oliver’s mother lived near a heavy metal club. Pursued by Hertz, Smith shoots his way out of the hideout, and he and Donna head to a nearby club. Above the club they discover an apartment with medical equipment and two dead, pregnant women; Smith concludes that the women were all impregnated with one man’s sperm in order to give birth to matching bone marrow donors.