Rampant Anomie

This is without a doubt the worst trigger-happy action film that I've ever seen. That isn't to say it doesn't have moments of purely technical inventiveness and spectacle. It's just that the whole sorry caper is infected with such a groundless sense of its own wit and sassiness that I couldn't let the gross insult to my intelligence pass unanswered.
It does have star draw in the persons of Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti, and God love 'em for delivering the terrible, scatalogical drivel that passes for a script without wincing, guffawing or sobbing at what they'd been reduced to.
It might seem that I'm taking a bit of popcorn cinema too seriously. Yet I'd take a sub-par Seagal or Van Damme movie over this because it would deliver its thrills without making the audience endure knuckle-bitingly awful gobbets of fortune-cookie wisdom in a desperate bid to be street-hip and deep. The script isn't so much your dad dancing at a wedding; more like your dad donning a hoodie and trying to bust a street-dance improv outside the offie with his own Level 42 megamix in the sound system.
Shoot 'Em Up desperately wants to keep company with the likes of Kill Bill and Sin City but the script alone puts it in a very lowly league of its own. If you want better gun-toting spectacle and edgy writing that doesn't get in the way, return to John Wu and his Pacific Rim confreres.

The basic premise is interesting and the director's track record promising, which together led me to ignore the negative criticism and waste a rental credit on this fat, diseased turkey. I may not be fully qualified to review this movie as I hated it so much I skipped the last half hour.
You'll be aware that the hero (Annakin Skywalker or whatever he calls himself these days), a lovestruck high school geek, finds himself able to teleport. As any teenage boy might, if he lives in an Oakley commercial, he uses this gift to get wealthy, get laid and get some surf. We are treated to images of Annakin picniccing on the Sphinx's head and clinging to Big Ben to try and persuade us that he is a charismatic, globe-skipping avatar of mind-bending power.
In a vain bid to turn this fantastic good fortune into a plot, Samuel L Jackson paints his hair white, produces an NSA ID card and chases Annakin around the world with an electric cane (really), interrupting Annakin's laying and surfing. Matters are further complicated by Annakin's pretty and pointless love interest and Jamie Bell's very confused accent, still in the air somewhere between Darlington and Burbank, but still leaving us in no doubt that dancing isn't just for poofs, divvent yer kna.
Each and every principal is bereft of charisma; perhaps Annakin, who mistakes pouting, sulking and glaring for acting, so lacks charisma that he drains everyone else's. Maybe they were all just mortified by the screenplay, which must have been written by a chimpanzee; not even a talented one, probably one of those 'scab' chimpanzees who worked through the screenwriter's strike. In short, give this a miss. If you want a taste of the sassy, well written, roaming action this director can deliver, revisit 'Go' or 'The Bourne Identify'.

The makers of this tosh seriously overrated themselves.
They must have thought their lazy and ludicrous plot made their movie as visonary and leftfield as The Matrix, despite lacking any zeitgeist or inner reality, or indeed any sign that it wasn't penned by an eight-year old who spends his waking hours drinking Red Bull and playing Grand Theft Auto.
Perhaps the makers thought parachuting in Angelina Jolie gave it the sexy sassiness of Mr & Mrs Smith; instead, the deathly professionalism needed by the distinguished cast to fulfill their contracts and issue their awful lines with straight faces leaves them no energy for anything more than constipated grumpiness.
Instead of lending this crock the earthy, urban lyricism of Pulp Fiction, the potty-mouthed, witless script sounds like it was penned by Vicky Pollard.
As for its much-vaunted special effects, if your idea of visual flair is endless shots of bullets tunnelling through cerebral matter, then this movie will excite you immensely. Even then, perverts of your ilk will get better value for money from the over-18 content on You Tube.
Worst of all, I rented this turkey and persuaded others to watch it, so there go my voting rights for the next few movie nights.
This crude, lazy effort at a high-kicking, comic-book actioner has only one distinguishing feature; it's somewhat less awful than Shoot 'Em Up and Jumper. Don't waste your time and money on this when you could just watch The Matrix, Kill Bill or Pulp Fiction again, or anything from Hong Kong.