Film Reviews

Shut Up and Shoot Me

• Rating:
• Director: Steen Agro
• Starring: Andy Nyman
• Details: UK / Czech Republic / 90mins (TBC).

Nice guy Colin Frampton's (Nyman) Prague holiday is cut short when his wife is accidentally killed by a falling statue. Distraught and unable to cope with her death, Colin pays his driver Pavel (Roden), working six jobs to keep his high-maintenance, unfaithful wife Liba (Geislerova) in expensive shoes, to kill him. When Colin's murder is botched, the unlikely pair become friends but are roped into Prague's seedy underworld. First-time director Steen Agro makes a few rookie mistakes: he tries too hard to impress and hammers home the jokes when they called for a more subtle approach. Warning signs are waved in the first few minutes: Colin's wife is crushed just inches from him, but Colin doesn't hear anything and wanders around calling her name before spotting the mess on the street. Agro isn't helped by the poor delivery of his leading men: Nyman, too jolly to be suicidal and too annoying to be sympathetic, believes he's acting in Notting Hill and not a Coen-esque black comedy set in Eastern Europe, while Roden seems confused as to what to do with his character. If the two leads played it straight instead of hunting for the jokes, this might have fared a little better. Shut Up and Shoot Me might be a throwaway comedy, yes, but there still has to be a consistency in character. Even Ace Ventura was consistent.

Review by Gavin Burke