Opening scene with the shootout already told me this movie was going to be bad. A hit man who wears a red nose that can't properly hold a pistol and hiding under a table and trained mercenaries can't kill him even though armed with assault rifles. Such a stupid movie.
Wow. That sounds just like my father after he watched "Shoot 'Em Up" with me.
I actually thought the movie was surprisingly VERY entertaining.
I don't normally care for action movies. I think they often take themselves too seriously and the whole premise is pretty dumb (with an action hero taking out armies and such) and it's not like they ever tend to have some deeper meaning to their very shallow plots.
I don't begrudge anyone else for not sharing my opinions and I definitely have my own guilty pleasures... so I'm glad those movies exist for other people to enjoy. It's just that they don't tend to be for me.
Having said that... I LOVED "Shoot 'Em Up" and in part of why I found this movie so wildly entertaining is because they don't take themselves too seriously. They're not just over-the-top... they're wildly over-the-top. To me, that just feels like they're more self-aware.
I also loved Mad Max: Fury Road and Kill Bill. Those are two more movies my father thought were stupid, by the way.
And I would definitely not call a movie like "Shoot 'Em Up" or this one or Mad Max: Fury Road or Kill Bill stupid. As a viewer, my personal opinion is that I enjoy them a lot more than something like The Bourne movies because I feel they're self-aware and... well, less "stupid" in that way. I don't mean to criticize the Bourne movies either... they're just not my personal taste. For the record: I also hate The Fast and the Furious franchise because I think they take themselves too seriously. It's too bad too, because the idea of a bunch of people doing outlandish things in over-the-top action scenes that mostly involve cars actually sounds like a good idea for an action movie to me. And when watching them I even feel like I could possibly like those movies if they just didn't put so much emphasis on their dreadful stories. I LOVE me a movie with a good story and something that takes itself very seriously.
But my personal taste is that if you want to be The Godfather then you should be The Godfather. If you want to be a movie with insane action sequences... then you should recognize that your movie is going to be very far from realistic and maybe you shouldn't take the movie too seriously at that point.
So for me... I thought this movie worked surprisingly well BECAUSE the action scenes and even just some of the scenes in general seemed to realize that this movie wasn't a serious drama that should be seen as "realistic" or any such nonsense.
Also, the movie sets up the idea very early that the male protagonist was sorta like Neo from The Matrix. So, to me, your complaint sounds comparable to someone complaining that Neo from The Matrix seemed to have supernatural powers that didn't seem realistic and that's just dumb... which, sorry, that complaint just sounds kinda... well, dumb. Sorry. Again, personal tastes and all that jazz.
But sorry you didn't like the movie.
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