★★ Shoot 'Em Up

[Twinkletoes: 2.0]

Twinkletoes says: 'Without a doubt the most absurd movie I have ever seen. I am stunned that Owen and Giamatti are both in this thing. Certainly not a good movie but it is watchable simply for its jaw dropping oddness. I don't want to give anything away but the plot really is one of the following.

#1 Clive Owen plays an unnamed man wearing a Union Jack t-shirt. One day he wanders into a tea house in an unnamed US city. While enjoying his tea a group of thugs come in to destroy the place and threaten the owners into selling. Owen single handily dispatches them all while making witticisms about revenge for the Boston Tea Party. The sweet elderly man and his sweet heavily made up elderly wife (think Tammy Faye Baker), who own the place tell him that an evil business man (Paul Giamatti) has been trying to get them to sell so that he can put in a strip club. Owen, who we find out was once a British Special Ops soldier, vows to help them because it's the only good tea place he can find in the US. And help them he does through a series of gunfights in which he always makes sure to have his pinky out whilst firing his gun. The fight to save the tea house seems to be going his way until he is betrayed by the daughter of the owners, who he was falling for, and is captured by Giamatti. At that point he is informed by the daughter that the real purpose of the tea house is to act as a front for an underground baby smuggling operation that sells the unwanted babies of prostitutes to an evil cosmetic company who has to look for an alternative to bunnies for testing. Owen decides that the strip club is the lesser of the 2 evils and agrees to help them get the tea house shut down. But once he discovers that the daughter is actually Giamatti's girlfriend and one of his strippers, he decides to dispatch of everyone. The movie ends with Owen wearing a Union Jack apron and serving tea at the tea shop which is now his.

#2 Clive Owen plays a man who is always eating a carrot and who comes across a pregnant woman being chased by thugs. He manages to help her give birth while engaging in a massive gun battle, dispatching more than a few foes with the aforementioned carrots. Although he can't save the mother's life he escapes with the baby who he must now reluctantly protect from this endless stream of assassins led by Paul Giamatti. Given that he has no experience in caring for kids he takes the baby to a prostitute who specializes in clients who have a breast feeding fetish. As they avoid countless attempts on their lives they discover a lab that seems to have huge amounts of sperm donated by the same man. It turns out that this man has been donating this sperm to create babies that can give him bone marrow transplants to help him battle a disease. The man happens to be a major politician who is very anti gun so it is the gun manufacturers who are trying to kill all of the babies so this man will die before he can run for president. But this politician guy isn't as good as he sounds so Owen decides to dispatch of him and everyone else only to live happily ever after with the prostitute and the baby.

#3 Clive Owen plays a burned out former world class marksman who because of huge gambling debts must now work for the mob as a nanny because he was unwilling to act as a hitman. Paul Giamatti plays a down on his luck clown who used to be in a Cirque de Soleil styled show but is now just a drunk clown for hire using his impressive clown resume to command big bucks for high end kid's birthday parties. Owen hires Giamatti to do the mafia boss' daughter's 5th birthday party while the mafia boss is out of town. Something goes awry and the little girl is kidnapped by unknown forces with Giamatti being the only one to have actually seen the kidnappers' faces. Fearing the wrath of his boss and for the safety of the little girl he has raised, Owen forces a reluctant Giamatti to help him on his quest to save the little girl. With Owen dressed as a big purple bear and Paul in full clown regalia (from the party) they follow a number of leads and at the end of each one there is a huge action scene where the 2 combine their shooting and acrobatic skills to do away with the suspected kidnappers. But alas, none of these leads them to the true culprit. Eventually they feel they are on the right track only to find that the real "kidnapper" is the girl's father who staged this whole thing to get Owen to dispatch with some of his rivals. The mafia boss shoots both Owen and Giamatti leaves them for dead not realizing that with the huge costumes they are wearing neither of them was actually hit and are just playing dead. As the mafia boss is about to leave the room Paul manages to do this amazing flip from his back to retrieve a gun. He then does a couple more flips to grab the girl and toss the gun to Clive who dispatches the mafia boss and all of his cronies. Fast forward a few years to see a modest back yard birthday party for the little girl that Paul is entertaining at. '