At first, the thought comes to mind: why isn’t anybody taking cover? You watch the protagonist fly across the room, shooting bullets that aren’t target-accurate. The antagonist responds, throwing himself over a few tables, accepting the invitation to the superfluous tango. Once that happens, the logic of excess is established, the reason behind the lack of a cover is clear. This is a world where the property of show is necessary for all violence.
This showy excess is not confined to the action choreography. The vertical and horizontal form of images are composed based on excess. Vertical: Pivotal moments of action are reaffirmed through multiple shots of the same act, images stacked on top of each other, necessitating overflow. Horizontal: Slow motion expands the temporal dimension superfluously.
When people arrange dominoes in massive, even sophisticated, patterns, the strenuous work of preparation is an accretion to a moment of excessive release. In moral solidarity with the child taking a bath, the exuberant vigor with which it slaps the soapy water around, splattering over the bathroom floor and walls, covering the caretaker’s clothes with patches of gushy liquid foam. There is a hospital sequence in the movie, where the gunmen take position at center, holding hostages facing out in a circle. This scene becomes the perfect concrete symbol for what the film is attempting to achieve. There are some cops intermixed with the hostages and the ones who have come to save them (Tequila, Long). When the saviors instruct them to “Get Down”, the translation is clear to the cops inside: to push and topple the hostages in front of them like dominoes, revealing the gangsters at the center. Libation-in-act given to the entity of excessive release is rewarded with the death of the gangsters.
Tequila is known as one who doesn’t waste bullets. The phrase carries a double meaning: one who does not waste bullets and one who does not waste (a chance to discharge) bullets. Everybody in this movie falls under the latter category, and Tequila its maximal embodiment. Excess always involves a discharge, outside the necessary, the exactly sufficient, and even the sufficient itself. Sufficiency is a necessity for excess. It is precisely the discharge that people want to eliminate when things are “too much”.
Is it not then fitting that Tequila is saved by a literal act of discharge? At the end, he has caught on fire, and his cabaret-like stamping to put out a fire is failing. Until the baby pisses on Tequila, extinguishing the fire. Now that the god of excess has rewarded its loyal devotee, he takes the long electrical wire torn out of the flaming building and throws himself and the baby outside the window, swinging into safety.