There's a lesson to be learned from Shoot 'Em Up. When a director and marketing team waxes lyrical about the likeness of a product to something very important that went before, alarm bells should naturally ring. Like that kid in the school yard who told everyone how tough he was. Alarm bells should ring.

If Shoot 'Em up is a fanboy's dream-homage to the great action cinema of Hong Kong, and more specifically John Woo, then fanboy's dreams should be banned. Taking a ridiculous premise that might have worked in more capable hands - a loner, a baby, a handgun and a manhunt - Shoot 'Em Up is an exercise in how not to direct an action film. The music is loud, the set-pieces dire and the overkill tedious. In not taking itself too seriously Shoot 'Em Up becomes not only a poorly executed series of shoot-outs but also a pompous, bloated affair with a stinking attitude that finds explicit and grotesque sex as funny as death by vegetable.

Where Shoot 'Em Up to truly respect its apparent influences it would be an economic thriller with inventive action scenes that carry weight and atmosphere aswell as ammunition. A disgraceful use of CG and a cast choc full of truly awful performances that come off more soap opera than tongue-in-cheek provide the final nails in a coffin that should be sent into the furnace of the sun rather than buried on earth itself.

Shoot 'Em Up sets a new bar for characterless bad-taste. Hats off.

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