I watched 300 yesterday and Shoot ‘Em Up today, neither with great expectations, but at least with the hope of some visceral pleasure. 300 was, to my mind, easily the worst 2007 movie that I watched. It’s pretensions to seriousness, its vicious message about masculinity and child-rearing, its frankly racist representation of “Persians†and its complete lack of irony and self-reflection mostly made me angry. Even the presence of McNulty as a Spartan traitor was not enough to relieve the stupidity of the movie.
Shoot ‘Em Up, on the other hand, despite a lack of any socially redeeming value, and some occasional lapses into misogyny (in particular, a scene with Giamatti, Bellucci and a gun), was a blast. It is exactly what it promises: a series of utterly implausible gun battles, leavened with some double entendres and deadpan humor. I have no idea what could have persuaded Giamatti, Bellucci and Clive Owens to have agreed to appear in the movie, and they appear to have made up the plot as they went along, but Owens makes a damn fine gunfighter with no name. The bottom line, I suppose, is that 300 is moronic, but takes itself seriously, while Shoot ‘Em Up is a little less stupid, a lot more fun, and does not take itself seriously at all.