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.
Production
Davis had wanted to make an action film which focused on guns and was devoid of explosions. He conceived the film after seeing a scene from John Woo’s critically acclaimed action film Hard Boiled (1992), in which star Chow Yun-fat rescues newborn babies from gangsters while engaged in a gunfight. Davis felt that the scene could be expanded into a feature-length film, a “gun-like” version of Run Lola Run (1998). By 2000, Davis had begun writing the screenplay; when the script was finished, however, studios refused to get it made after the Columbine High School massacre happened, causing him to shelve the project and return to making low-budget independent films.
Marketing
In July 2007, Shoot ‘Em Up was publicized with a guerrilla marketing campaign by the London-based agency New Media Maze. The campaign included a viral video and a website selling bogus items ranging from bulletproof strollers to riot helmets for infants. A video was released on YouTube in which the company claimed to test the bulletproof stroller by shooting at it with a submachine gun while a baby was in it. The baby was then removed from the stroller unharmed. The hoax campaign was taken seriously by global media and the blogging community; Aftonbladet, Sweden’s largest evening tabloid, carried the story on its online edition for some time. In November 2007, two ads that showed Owen and Giamatti holding guns were banned in the United Kingdom by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) on the grounds that they had “glamorized and glorified gun crime” and “were offensive and insensitive toward families directly affected by gun crime”. At the time of the ruling, it was also reported that gun violence in the UK was on the rise.RELATED:
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Release, Box office.
Although Variety reported a planned release during the 2006 holiday season, Shoot ‘Em Up was previewed in September of that year. The film was released in American theaters on September 7, 2007. It was released on the same day in Canada, opening on 235 screens against 3:10 to Yuma. Audience response to a screening at the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con was positive. Shoot ‘Em Up opened in fourth place on its first weekend, earning $5,716,139 at 2,108 locations. Overall, the film grossed $12,807,139 over six weeks in North American theaters and $26,820,641 worldwide. It was regarded as a box-office failure, recouping less than its budget. The film’s DVD and Blu-ray versions were released in January 2008 by New Line Home Entertainment with a behind-the-scenes featurette titled “Ballet of Bullets”, 17 minutes of animatics and audio commentary from director Michael Davis, trailers and deleted scenes. New Line released another DVD and Blu-ray of the film in a two-disc version in August 2011.