Shut Up and Shoot Me

Dude wants to commit suicide but prefers that someone else kill him, painlessly and quick. Yeah, I've seen that one before.

Nothing original here, the same old story about a dweeb wanting someone to kill him and hiring the worst possible guy for the job. I had high hopes in the first 10 minutes, but it went downhill from there.

Naturally our suicidal hero gets everyone else involved in his problems, from the promiscuous wife of his hired killer to the local gangster. Hilarity is supposed to ensue, but you've already seen this movie a few times, with much the same jokes, so it falls kind of flat.

There is a somewhat enjoyable ending, that does add something new to the story, but that's about it. In between the good beginning and twist ending are exactly the scenes you expect to see.

This was director Steen Agro's first major film, and he has reason to be proud. I look forward to his future efforts. I enjoy a good farce, and this one was entertaining.

British nebbish Colin visits Prague with his wife. Her sudden and bizarre accidental death leads Colin to a suicidal depression and he turns to the only person he knows in Prague - the hotel driver Pavel - to assist him in killing himself. Bumbling Pavel tries his best to perform his homicidal duty, but extenuating plot lines begin to unravel their idiotic plans.

The acting was competent from all parties involved, and the East-meets-West relationship between Andy Nyman and Karel Roden is believable and charming. I happen to love Prague and "Tschechia", so perhaps my conclusion is biased by Agro's terrific framing of this wonderful wintery place. If that is so, then damn me - but not this funny and weird film.

Shut Up and Shoot Me (two and a half stars) Directed and written by: Steen Agro Running time: 90 min Country: UK / Czech Republic Stars: Karel Roden, Andy Nyman, Anna Geislerová, Robert Polo, Denisa Knoblochová ....

Bumbling Englishman Colin is the sort of person who frets endlessly about whether he left the iron switched on. He goes to Prague for a beautiful weekend with his wife, but she inconveniently gets crushed under a statue as he dithers with his head in a travel guide worrying over details. Colin quickly decides life is no longer worth while and hires his equally useless Czeck driver to put him out of his misery. Several fruitless attempts later, including sitting Colin on a bomb site and arranging for him to fall out with a mobster, they have someone else's dead body on their hands and no money.

Shut Up and Shoot Me has the potential to be an entertaining spoof, but falls short on many counts. The acting is unconvincing - well below par given the experience of the cast - and with the result that characters seem little more than well-worn caricatures. The interminable amount of time through which each joke is spread out is well beyond the capacity for laughs and suggests the story could have been condensed into a 20 minute short quite easily. As a full-length no-brainer it just about qualifies for a low attention span afternoon.

There is something amiable about a mix of nerds, a nymphomaniac, a gangster called the Butcher of Prague, and a miscellany that includes poisoning, blackmail, hiding of bodies and a high-kicking Butcher side-kick. It is director Steen Agro's debut feature film and perhaps in more experienced hands it could have turned out better, but it has sadly failed to achieve any real potential.

I noticed a weird thing...in this film, Karel smiled only once. Karel, the bumbling, likable "killer" smiled when the old woman saw them dump the body in the frozen lake and it was hilarious. Yes, this movie was definitely Fargo. Who's idea was it for Andy to carry around his wife's ashes in an urn the whole movie? Fantastic. Steen's first film? Congratulations Steen! Some wonderful filming techniques! A great job of when the wife got smashed underneath the monument, a great job of having Andy disappear off the lake in the final scene, and countless others! I thought it was a totally kooky movie...please make sure you watch the director/writers comments after wards. The hot girl in the Hummer was a weird sub plot that was entirely not necessary but it gave me a chance to enjoy the dog and the weird gangster. This movie was just great.