It’s late at night. An obviously very pregnant woman stumbles past a man sitting on a bench. A beefy guy with a gun follows, mumbling obscenities at the woman. The bench sitter sighs, and after a moment heads into the alleyway after them. A billion gunshots are fired, forty heptillion gallons of blood are spilled – but none by our hero – and we’re off and running on a quirky, gore-filled adventure that’s alternately clever and stupid. Mostly stupid. Really, really stupid. Mr. Smith (Clive Owen) finds himself the unwilling caretaker of the newborn, but if you think he’s just going to go on the run from whoever was shooting at the now-dead momma, you’re in for a surprise. No, Mr. Smith is more like Mel Gibson’s character in the underrated Payback, wherein Mel beats the holy crap out of everyone in his path just to get back some money he was owed. Mr. Smith simply shoots or stabs (sometimes with a carrot, and we all know how deadly those can be) everyone in his path just to find out who’s shooting at him and the baby. He’s not alone, though; since everyone knows guys can’t do the rearing-babies thing, he recruits an old flame who happens to be a lactating prostitute (Monica Bellucci) to take care of lil’ Oliver. Bellucci, perhaps most famously seen in the Matrix movies, is the prettiest wooden drugstore Indian you ever did see. All she can do is purse her lips, puff up her chest, and nurture, nurture, nurture, as literally and graphically as you might imagine.

See, Shoot ‘Em Up isn’t just dumb, it’s profoundly dopey, with crazy stunts that aren’t even remotely rooted in reality. This might be okay if the movie were animated, but as the characters all exist in what appears to be the normal world, all you’re left with is a swarm of implausibility and ridiculousness.

Owen is earnest, but he’s obviously much more talented than the script allows him to be; Mr. Smith is a comic-book character who doesn’t even get bloodied himself until an hour into the mess, whereas the total body count (bad guys, of course) is somewhere around 100 people. Remember those old ninja films where the bad guys in black would surround the good guy and then take turns beating him down? That happens here, only there’s no beating down, just a lot of standing around and getting shot. In fact, no joke here, the chief bad guy (Paul Giamatti, also playing below his station) has scads of opportunities to waste Smith throughout the movie, but true to movie-villain form he decides to deliver soliloquies about how freaking awesome he and his plan are. Unreal. He stands there, preening and gloating, giving Smith ample time to get away. And this happens not just once, no, this happens many times. Dumbest. Villain. Ever.

There’s a running gag about how Smith loves carrots (and hates everything else in the world; he’s like a stand-up comedy act in Hell); he uses them in inventive ways during his attacks on the faceless bad guys: as missles, as sharp instruments of death, as ways to catch a falling handgun, and so on. None of these usages makes Smith any more appealing as a character. They just make me think he must have great eyesight.

There’s even a brief homage to the scene in Raising Arizona when Nicolas Cage leaves the Huggies in the middle of the road and goes back to get ‘em at full speed. Well, maybe it’s not an homage, because my guess is that the makers of Shoot ‘Em Up would never have bothered watching a movie with such superior stunts and chase scenes. Yes, even the stunts are moronic, because one mustn’t merely suspend disbelief, one must throw it off a cliff and laugh maniacally.

Oh, and there’s some kind of story about harvesting babies for their bone marrow, but obviously no one gave much thought to the plot, which serves only as a device for people to get shot at as if in the middle of a treacherous game of Contra on the old eight-bit Nintendo system.

Director Michael Davis offers little reason for anyone to watch his movie, other than a brief topless glimpse at Bellucci during her sex scene with Owen – not spoiling anything there, when there’s one hero and one girl, they’re going to sleep together at some point. It’s a movie law.

*1/2