Upstream - Episode 29.5: Shoot Em Up

Episode Date: April 5, 2022

This episode is genuinely one of our best, I think. It's a deep dive into a movie that just isn't really very good, but the director and writer had such passion that it's hard not to feel kinship with the guy. Also, we finally put forth the central point of the podcast: It's gay to cum. Find the whole episode at our reasonably-priced patreon! https://www.patreon.com/posts/64776036   *WEB DESIGN ALERT*  Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/   Find us at https://killjamesbond.com and https://twitter.com/killjamesbond

You know, a gun is better than a wife, but a silencer on a gun. Sorry, I just went, I literally, I went to open the IMD for this. I just typed IMDb into my search bar here, Enter, and it brought up Plane's fire and rescue. Yeah, our favorite movie. My favorite movie. A better film. It's your kill James Bond bonus, you know who we are. Abby has made us watch, shoot him up. Yes, I remember very much enjoying this film

when I was a teenager, probably because I was too young to see it. And I look back now and I'm like, wow, it's a miracle that I didn't commit some kind of mass shooting or crime. I was vaguely aware of this movie in hindsight, as like, oh, it's kind of like a cartoon, but with guns, right? Like, but live action. And I love that one of the things that my friends are always

saying about me is that I love the irresponsible handling of firearms. I think that it's cool and it's good. You can use them for almost anything. You point it with stuff and it doesn't matter. Yeah, you point it with something that doesn't matter. Yeah, exactly. This film came out in 2007 when I was 20, when I was six years old. When you were six years old, yes. Yeah, so I just think it hasn't aged, either it hasn't aged well or I haven't aged well. No, it hasn't aged well. It hasn't, it hasn't. I have two points here and one of them is that every time Abby picks a movie for us she goes, I

remember this being good and then we study episode by her kind. All right I'd like to address it. The other thing is all of those are the best movies to talk about on the fucking podcast because this clearly has the most to say about masculinity. I hate it. You know how do you know how some white transforms had like a problematic fortune Nazi. You know how some white transforms had like a problematic fortune Nazi phase. I never had that, but I did have a liking terrible movies phase.

Absolutely, I think we both did. And that's why the Slotin Muck has worked so well. So this has Mark Strong in it is the main thing that you should know about it. Yes, yes. Yeah, Mark Strong from Children of Men reprising his role. Yeah. But like, if that's a champ from the board, I'd end to see.

It's like if Children of Men was made by a guy of like a brain injury. It's so, but it's like they watch you know, like, damn, we should just get to be clear Cliveau. We should just get Cliveau and to just walk around the go. Ugh. This was a movie made when Cliveau Owen was like in contention for Bond. And so much like Leia Cakes, Daniel Craig's, ooh, will I won't I? Will I play Bond?

May perhaps. Kind of like Tee's movie. This was Clive Owen's. And you begin to understand why Clive Owen did not get the Bond wrong. Because he made the mistake of doing this. Yeah, I think Clive Owen is fine in this. And it is good and charming, even. It's just that this is a nihilist film.

This is what you thought the foreigner was. I think it is close to the foreigner, but anyway, okay. So we're in Clevver. We're in New York City, or like somewhere, some extremely like grimy East Coast, US City. We're in Zack's Night of 300 city where all the blacks are really crushed and all the yellow stand out. And we have one associative color that is popped in the color grade and this time it's orange.

Yes. And we see our boy, Cliveau, and he's wasting by a bus stop. He's chewing on a carrot because he's bug's bunny. This will become important later. He's minding his own business and a visibly very heavily pregnant woman in a yellow dress runs past pursued by some thugs with guns.

And so he gets up off of his bench and he's just like, Fuckin' hell. And listen, right. The important thing to note at this point is, I found, and I read it, asked me anything. Fuck.

From eight years ago, from the writer and director of Shuse-Map, a guy called Michael Davis, and the thing you should know about Shuse-Map is Shuse-Map did not make its budget back. Really? And so Michael Davis has not made anything since. He has the terrifying IMDB page of shoes him up 2007, a short that he wrote himself in 2013 and then nothing. So, it's not great and it hasn't aged well, but it's not like never work again bad. There's nothing made worse films than this.

There's nothing that's like that distinct about this guy from a lot of other filmmakers who have also made terrible movies very successfully. And I do the parts of this that are like fucking sick. It's like genuinely inventive seconds in this movie. Frustration, he highlighted them all yet to him. Did not make this successfully. It didn't make its budget back.

And so I really like the first half hour. One of the things that he says in this in this Reddit ask me anything that is is pressure is that there is no like medium budget action movie anymore. You can either make the Avengers or you can make something yourself where you put the camera in like a shopping cart, but you can't make this kind

of thing where they give you 6,000 feet of film a day, Cliveau and Paul GMati and go, okay, make an action movie because it just isn't like economic anymore and it just isn't an artistic choice that studios will risk anymore. What did he say the budget for this was? Oh, it was not high. 30 million or something, I'm not actually sure the budget hold on. The budget for this was 39 million, yeah. There you go.

So yeah, that's the sort of vibe here. And I will also say one thing, right, which is, there's another comment here by him, which says, finally, I came up on the idea, what gave me the most joint action movies, a good gunfight? So I wrote down all my cool ideas for gunfights. I thought, now this is a fun concept, something I wanted to see. Plot was secondary to the big concept of a movie with a ton of cool and different gunfights. And these are, he really delivered that vision.

I'll say that. That's absolutely fucking right. Because the plot here is Gossamerthin. So Clive Owen follows this pregnant woman into the, I guess a warehouse or whatever. A guy tries to cut the baby out of her with a knife, leading her to pull a gun and shoot him. Clive Owen picks up the gun, which is now jammed and begins killing and does not stop the next hour

Sorry, he begins killing first of all by starving this man through the eye with the carrot Sorry, sorry, the mother of the carrot and saying yeah, but vegetables. I have a think I have a drop of the eat your vegetables Even don't drop the you've had yeah Yeah, he delivers every line like this. Yeah He delivers every line in this like a UPS guy. It is there. It has been thrown through your open second floor window and a maybe tip box. Like it's the performance in this.

I think he's funny. I think it suits the character more than I think. I mean, the thing about this fucking movie is the first shot is pretty fucking decent and I got like halfway through writing this is good before I stopped and wrote, sorry, I was half of writing, this is good. Um, because I should have started. It was abysmal. Um, it is.

It is. It is. It is. It is. It is still like this. It is still like this. It is still like this. It is still like this.

It is still like this. It is still like this. It is still like this. It is still like this. It is still of guys. He's jumping through things. It's kind of kind of circus. So all the PPK, which he later calls a piece of crap, which is your Bond tees line. Well, he's, he delivers this woman's child. Yeah, who's this woman? Don't worry, never give in a name. Literally just called baby's mum in the credits. Yeah. And he delivers the baby while shooting a bunch of people and then he shoots the umbilical cord leading her to say the line, the fuck is wrong with you. And see this, and this is the turn for the film.

Like, there was so many like runs towards some guys, he shoots two legs out of a table, runs out the table, kills guys in mid air, like it's deliberately silly. Again, I maintain it roughly the first half an hour of this film is good until they start trying to have a story. I think this is the point at which it goes off the rails within the first three minutes, because the conceit here, the thing which Michael Davis has started with is,

I wanted to do a gun fight while the guy's delivering a baby and in a world in which every tool is a gun I find that quite funny. Yeah, that's a good sign of compelling and and then he immediately kind of ruins it by doing like Okay, that that kind of setup was extremely cool to me and Abby when we watched this movie when we were 14 But I would have liked it at 14. I guarantee you that. Yeah, absolutely.

Um, but then Paul Giamatti arrives on the scene. Ah, I love Paul Giamatti's performance in this film. He is so good as a sinister villain. Like, he's enjoying playing against type. He is enjoying it. I'll say that. He's having a good time and that's all I can say. I can actually say a lot more, but you're gonna have to go to the Patreon for it.

It's patreon.com slash kill James Bond. It's only like a five or a month. I'm really pressed for time this week. So this is as much as you're getting. Okay, please just send us the money. Thank you. Love you. services as much as you're getting. Okay, please just send us the money. Thank you. Love you.