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.