Shut Up and Shoot Me

Colour, 35 mm
Czech Republic, United Kingdom, 2005, 90 min
Section: Variety Critics´ Choice

Synopsis

A jet-black comedy about a grief-stricken British widower who wants to die and an Eastern European everyman who can’t quite accommodate him, Shut Up and Shoot Me is proof that Euro-made, English-lingo genre pics can work. On vacation in Prague with his pretty wife Maggie, tubby British fussbudget Colin Frampton is devastated when, during a stroll around town, Maggie is crushed, Monty Python-like, by a statue. The driver assigned by Colin’s hotel to take him to the morgue is Pavel Zeman, a seething bundle of resentment hen-pecked by shopaholic wife Liba into working odd jobs. With no one to help him and nowhere to turn, the timid Brit begs the cash-strapped Czech to kill him, offering a large sum of money. Script from debuting helmer Steen Agro comments shrewdly on the determinedly practical Czech character via the plot’s bleaker aspects. Explaining why Liba is in the car with them, Zeman tells Colin “first we will take her to the beauty shop, then we will kill you.”