"Shoot 'Em Up" is my new favorite movie...

...ever.

Ok, that's over-the-top, but I'm saying this is a fantastic flick.

A sensational "tough guy" movie (better than Sin City), and a better "movie that knows it's a movie" than Planet Terror.

I enjoyed it from beginning to end. It's genuinely funny and genuinely thrilling, which is a harder mix to get right than some may think. Director/screenwriter Michael Davis does it by setting the loony tone right from the beginning (I wouldn't dream of telling you how...but I've just given you a clue) and maintaining it throughout.

I was surprised to realize, listening to his DVD commentary, that Davis is the man who made 100 Girls and Eight Days A Week, two films which I'd put in the category of good-looking movies that are completely lost when it comes to screenplay.

Here, his skills as a writer have finally caught up with those as a director. And the actors, god bless them, know how to play both comedy and reality, so you laugh even as you're caught up in the action, and vice-versa.

Shoot 'Em Up is very much a "guy's" movie, but I think you ladies might like it too, as I say, it's funny, and, ah...Clive Owen.



Can't be bad...

The always-worth-watching Paul Giamatti looks like he's having an exhilarating time breaking free from his typecasting. Without ever quite "winking" at the audience he plays a villain with just the right touch of self-mockery.

We (straight) guys won't be drooling over Clive, but besides the zoom-bang action, we do get Monica Bellucci, who of course looks like a goddess.



But she also gives the best "hooker with a heart of gold" performance since Elisabeth Shue in Leaving Las Vegas.



In a small but key role, the very pretty actress Ramona Pringle (above) plays the pregnant woman whose troubled delivery-to say the least-is the start of the whole thing.

Though she's killed early on, she was extremely well-cast. Making enough of an impact in her burst of time onscreen that, later, when she's dead but not quite gone, we still think of her as a her. And wonder about her back-story. I did, anyway.



Oh, and talking of whoring, which I was...I'm not ashamed to tell you there's one scene where Clive O. spanks a woman played by Laura DeCarteret (right).

I thought one or two of you women might be interested to know that (well-maybe a little ashamed).



Jane McLean (above) and Talia Russo (below) play hookers the metal characteristics of whose hearts are not determined, but look good in g-strings and bras, which is all the movie really asks of them.



It also has the second-most fun ending credits of any 2007 movie I've seen (Ratatouille is the most).

That this movie did so poorly at the box office is, I think, a reflection on us as a people.

I haven't seen Juno, but there's no way it's better than this.