Bugs Bunny never shanked Elmer Fudd with a carrot.

Nor did Yosemite Sam ever get permanently blown to smithereens.

Minor quibbles, we know. Fact is, there's little else about Shoot 'Em Up that doesn't unspool like a 90-minute, live-action chapter of Looney Tunes -- albeit with loads more sex and splatter. To overstate the obvious, Clive Owen's taciturn hero -- curiously untethered by the laws of physics -- even habitually crunches on a certain orange vegetable and is referred to by villain Paul Giamatti as a "wascally wabbit." Among the many, many things Shoot 'Em Up will be accused of being, subtle isn't one of them.

Owen stars as Smith, a scowling, lone wolf who -- through no fault or intention of his own -- winds up self-appointed protector of and surrogate parent to a newborn baby hunted by assassins led by Giamatti. Monica Bellucci's DQ, in turn, becomes the mother to the impromptu family, providing favours to strangers in exchange for such items as a bullet-proof baby vest.

The actors, unquestionably and predictably, are leagues better than the material deserves. Owen, as always, makes for a compellingly hard-boiled anti-hero, while Giamatti gratefully broadens from the cinematic schlep he's usually seen as. Here, he's Owen's slick, urbane foil, forever frustrated by the elusively of his prey. One sprung trap after another fails --whether on a playground, on a highway or even in the sky.

Part-Chuck Jones, all-John Woo, director Michael Davis has made what amounts to a concussive cartoon that's both a satire of and love letter to its two-fisted, guns-blazing genre of choice.

Like Bugs, Davis wants to have his carrot and eat it too. Yet one wonders if anyone will get -- or appreciate -- the joke.

More likely, Shoot 'Em Up will be 1) dismissed as warmed-over Woo; 2) worshipped by hard-core fans eager to bask in Davis' Buster Keaton-esque aptitude for choreographed mayhem; and 3) reviled by the easily-offended, thanks to its gleeful sordidness.

This is a movie, after all, that casts Bellucci as a prostitute nicknamed the Dairy Queen -- and yes, that means milk moustaches for everyone.

My problem?

While I appreciate Davis' audacity -- and filmmaking skill -- you can only be engaged by a wild, crass gag-reel for so long before such niggling details as plot (there's none), logic (there's less) and character development (Bellucci's hooker lactates -- does that count?) undermine the ecstatic vortex of violence.

There's a reason those Jones-directed clashes between the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote top out at the 10-minute mark.

Unlike a wabbit, man can not survive on carrot alone.

(This film is rated 18-A)
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