I've read Ms. Stevens' review of Shoot 'Em Up about three times now, and I still can't figure out exactly why she disliked the movie. Apparently, any movie with a lactating hooker is bad ab initio. I am not a connoisseur of the harlot arts, but is lactation all that much poorer taste than the more routine activities in which hookers engage?

Certainly, there was an ample amount of blood, guts, and other viscous material. I can see how some reviewers could be less-than-enamored by this constant effusion of bodily fluids. But not Ms. Stevens. She would have no problem with the level of violence if it only were a lighthearted genre pastiche like Hot Fuzz. So, apparently, it was not the level of violence that was the problem, it is that the violence did not come with a requisite number of chuckles. Perhaps Ms. Stevens can enlighten us on an acceptable guts-to-giggle ratio.

Despite Ms. Stevens' tsk-tsking, Shoot 'Em Up is a very funny movie. Come on, a lactating hooker with the initials of DQ? The sad sack from Sideways as a sociopathic hitman? Clive Owen's Bugs Bunnyesque carrot shtick? That, my friends, is comic gold. This movie was as riddled with jokes as it was with bullets. I swear that the old lady in the theater next to me almost shot coke through her nasal passages because she was laughing so hard.

I'm inclined to suspect that Ms. Stevens may be the victim of too many earnest art movies. The kind with pouty progagonists and a soundtrack chock-full of bands you've never heard of. Truth be told, I like those movies, but a steady diet of them leads to a certain impairment of the humor response. Regardless of the reason, Ms. Stevens doesn't know from funny.

Additionally, I am confused that, on one hand, Ms. Stevens complains that Shoot 'Em Up is not a genre pastiche and, on the other hand, complain that it steals so much from other movies. I am not ashamed to admit that I had to look up the definition of "pastiche". I suggest that Ms. Stevens do the same.