Shut Up and Shoot Me

Director: Steen Agro
Screenwriter: Steen Agro
Starring: Karel Roden, Andy Nyman, Anna Geiselrova, Robert Polo
Running time: 88 mins

Colin (Nyman) is a neurotic British tourist on holiday in Prague with his wife, though we don't see much of the latter, since she's squished by a falling statue within the first few minutes and spends the rest of the film in an urn. Distraught and convinced that life is no longer worth living but too cowardly and inept to do anything about it himself, the bereaved Colin asks the only person in Prague he knows, his driver Pavel (Roden), to kill him.

Pavel, who keeps up a number of unappealing jobs in order to allow his consumerist wife (Geiselrova) to maintain the shoe-buying lifestyle to which she has grown accustomed, reluctantly agrees for financial reward. However, their ill-fated attempts to finish Colin off turn upside-down the world of all those surrounding them as they anger gangster Karel, the Butcher of Prague (Polo).

What, on the premise, could have ended up pure slapstick is elevated to a more blackly comic and witty affair by some sparkling chemistry between the two leads in what has elements of a buddy movie, a gangster film and domestic drama. Andy Nyman gives a good performance as the whining and indecisive Colin, pushing the character to the point that by the end of the film we're as frustrated by him and his indecision as Pavel is.

Despite Colin's loss and plight, it's the hen-pecked and increasingly haggard Pavel for whom Karel Roden makes us feel more sympathy. Working his fingers to the bone to keep his ungrateful, unfaithful wife happy, both the audience and eventually Colin realise that Pavel possibly has it worse.

Well shot and well acted, the only drawback to the film is that not quite all the humour hits home. That said, even where the script has a rare dodgy patch, the delivery and chemistry is still enough to pull it through.

All in all, Shut Up and Shoot Me is a well executed, deliciously dark comedy and an impressive feature debut from Agro.