By Fred Topel

I'm going to have to stop calling director Michael Davis my soul mate. It's making him uncomfortable. But watching the action movie of my dreams on Blue Ray just makes me feel even closer to him.

I never noticed the lighting scheme Davis used for the film. The Blu Ray quality shows every hue of light, changing colors sometimes during scenes, definitely from scene to scene. The crisp blue night, the yellows of clothing and vehicles, the greens of waters and reflections and of course the blood red spraying all over the place.

The red light of the brothel isn't necessarily subtle but it's awesome. Contrast that with the gun warehouse that is so brightly lit you can see everything. Hell, the different cabins on the airplane each have their own color pallet.

Blinking lights in scenes change the color on the fly. Windows have lit hues, pink of green from the neon outside. You see the sharp lines of shade on faces, particularly in the warehouse and motel room. You don't even see true flesh tone until the final scene! Even the bright white bullet sparks are sharp and awesome.

The detail on the actors' faces is pretty awesome too. All the gritty, sweaty, stubbly cracks and crevices make Clive Owen look badass. Likewise, all the decript, old slums show all the cracks and debris both in establishing shots and when they're getting all blown to sh**. Contrast that with the smooth softness of Monica Bellucci's heaving bosom.

Interestingly, shots of normal TVs within the film show the difference between high-def and normal resolution. That was probably on purpose to make the TV footage look like TV footage, but it's kind of cool to see them stand out in an otherwise detailed frame.

The Blu Ray exclusive visual commentary is a series of on set interview clips featuring Davis, the actors and the technicians on the set, talking about the filmmaking in present tense. It's basically an EPK going on during the movie. Why would you watch that during the movie? It's not scene specific, except a few times they actually play a clip addressing the scene in the movie. Still, it's not like Pan's Labyrinth which showed you the miniatures of the scenes you were watching.

The other extras are reproduced from the standard DVD. The deleted scenes are in high definition so you can watch the wall climb action sequence in quality as high as the feature film. The EPK is HD too. The animations are not, but they are black and white anyway.

This was my perfect experience watching Shoot 'Em Up. I never went back to the movie theaters after the press screening because I thought it would be so sad to sit in an empty little theater with a small screen after the tragic opening weekend. But in the privacy of my own home with kickass HD, life is good.