Information for Parents
Common Sense Media says not for kids
Over-the-top action with guns, guns, and ... guns.
What Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that this over-the-top, gun-focused action movie brims with wild violence and its effects. Much of it is presented in a comic, cartoonishly excessive way, but characters are still left torn, bloodied, bruised, and broken. Violent acts are mostly shooting-related (one particularly extreme sequence features characters shooting at each other during a fall from an airplane), but there are explosions and car crashes too -- all with painful-looking results. Sexual content includes references to the heroine's work as a prostitute (she's introduced in brothel), plus shots of naked breasts and cleavage, and a prolonged sex act during a violent assault. Language is quite salty (primarily variations on "f--k") but probably not as plentiful as you'd expect -- mostly because so much of the screen time is spent shooting instead of talking.
- Families can talk about the movie's cartoonish approach to violence. How does seeing the kind of extreme violence typical of Looney Toons shorts translated to live-action affect your opinion of both approaches? Is animated violence easier to stomach than its real-life counterpart? Why or why not? Why do we as filmgoers like to see things go bang and blow up? What are the consequences of violence in real life? What messages is the movie sending about guns and "gun control"?
The good stuff
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Positive messages: The hero is stoic and virtuous -- and a killing machine; the villain is snarly and underhanded; a politician is hypocritical.
What to watch for
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Violence: Many, many guns. They're shot, thrown, exploded, bought, brandished, compared, cleaned, heated to burn someone, and arranged into grand traps. Lots of loud gunfire, shooting in motion (sliding, falling, leaping, flipping), car crashes, bloody bodies dropping, blood spurting and oozing, and lasting wounds, scars, and bruises with bloody bandages. At one point, carrots are used as weapons (jammed into eye sockets/through skulls). A man is tortured by having his fingers broken (very visibly) and threatened with a scalpel to the eye. Fights include kicks, hits, punches, falls, head-butts. First scene shows a mother giving bloody birth, after which she's shot dead. The baby is frequently in danger (thrown, shot at, hidden, used as jokey prop, left in traffic); at other times, Smith teaches him the parts and uses of a handgun.
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Sex: Repeated female nakedness, particularly breasts (on both live women and dead ones). Frequent references to and images of prostitutes (brothel doorways show various sexual acts, including a woman's naked bottom, a "school girl" performance, and a dominatrix whipping her client). A woman performs oral sex on a client in an alley (viewers see where her head is positioned). An elaborate, comic sex scene has the woman moaning ecstatically as she and partner are shot at and assaulted (no explicit body parts are seen, but nudity is clear, as is the activity). Various colorful phrases (e.g., "nothing like a good hand job," "phallic mumbo jumbo," "you should see me spell my name in the snow").
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Language: Some clever use of language ("F-U-K-U" in spelled out in shot-out neon signage), plus a range of spoken/yelled vulgarity, including "f--k," "s--t," ""ass" (also with "hole"), "damn," "hell," "bitch," "p---y," and "rat bastard."
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Consumerism: Cars (BMW), mentions of NBC and the Discovery Channel.
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Drinking, drugs and smoking: Hertz takes a combination of vodka and Tylenol; reference to morphine.