SUCKer PUNch
Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2011 3:04 am
Sucker Punch
Directed by Zack Snyder
Starring: Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, Carla Gugino & Jon Hamm
Based on Zack Snyder's previous directing gigs, walking into Sucker Punch with a sense of pending disappointment is an accurate way to start this film. The movie starts with a great big blow to your expectations and in its finale finishes the 109 minute masturbation-of-metal-core, by taking a dump all over any kind of redeemable story or plot. This movie is a solid 1 and I need to explain why.
First off, it becomes very hard to relate to characters who have no real names. We have Baby Doll, Sweet Pea, Rocket, Amber, & Blondie. I honestly thought they would eventually introduce Dusty Gozongas by the end of the film, but even the joy of ironic humor was lost to the writers of this self-absorbed flash-bang film. The girls move throughout the film in fake identities with fake ambitions and have nothing but the most honest intentions of escape from the severely over-the-top insane asylum called Lennox House. Unfortunately, most of the characters serve no purpose other than extra dialogue.
The film, right from the get-go, is a bit of a stretch. What could have easily taken 15 minutes to tell is stretched over a 109 minute time span of pointless noise and gyrating half-nude, young, female bodies as they tote guns and swords in completely outrageous scenarios. The story kicks off with the tragedy of the(improbably) 20 year old "Baby Girl" and how she came to the terrible Lennox House in Vermont. The rest of the movie after her introduction to the various cast members is a sexual explosion into metaphorical dream states and overtly stimulated action scenes that would have made Freud and the Wachowski brothers, respectively, sit down and check their pulses.
Sucker Punch unravels in a tactless style that reminds me of Snyder's previous film Watchmen. There is absolutely zero pay-off for the audience and there was a complete absence of a hero's journey. The hero is never redeemed, she never receives a beneficial lesson in life, and the entire film is an abysmal, gray, fight for a freedom. However the audience is never given anything to go on to believe the characters deserve their freedom. The only exception to that is Baby Doll who is responsible for the accidental death of her sister, whilst trying to protect her from her ravenous and greedy step-father.
When Baby Doll (Emily Browning) dances for men (arguably herself), she steps into a dream state where she fights evil in some poor metaphor that is meant to resemble her fighting for her freedom. During her "dream-fights" (for lack of a better term and a laziness to find a better one), Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish) and the other girls of the ward try to work together to retrieve various "artifacts" that Baby Doll needs to escape (the knife, the fire, the map, & the key).
There is never any definitive evidence in the film that the girls are being brutalized or exploited by "Blue" (a mobster/... warden? Apparently?) but most of the film happens in Baby Doll's (or was it Sweet Pea's?) head, so the evidence is circumstantial at best. While Baby Doll & Sweet Pea continue their state of denial, Dr. Vera Gorski (Carla Gugino) attempts to "save them" by having them dance their pain away, in hopes that they will be able to deal with their bodies are being whored out to men of power in Vermont. Again though, the evidence of that is shoddy being a good 80% of this movie is in the imagination of the girls. Freud really would have loved this movie.
The soundtrack is stuffed with poor 1990's alt-rock covers while simultaneously the story attempts to either pay homage (or possibly plagiarize) various works from over the years including (and not limited to): 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest', 'Girl Interrupted', 'Sailor Moon', 'Lord of the Rings', & the video game 'Bioshock'. It felt like various interns to Robert Rodriguez had gotten together after a long night of some anime-marathon and decided they needed to make a movie, set in 1955 Vermont, about school girls in an insane asylum, putting themselves into provocative situations while fighting with samurai swords, mechas, anti-aircraft guns, and a lot of 9 mm bullets. It was just a terrible film and is realistically a waste of just about every one's money.
There is zero originality throughout the entire picture and not a moment of hesitation or pause to further develop a plot that could have been easily explained in a simple fifteen minute short-film. It was like watching a live action of every poor anime to ever come out of Japan combined with the most apathetic writing conceivable. The fact that this movie took $82 million to make is a tad scary when one steps back and realizes how little emphasis on telling an actual story there was.
The only true positive point about this film is the special effects were astounding. Unfortunately for the visual CGI artists for the film, the sheer audio volume is enough to overwhelm that aspect and allow me to slap a solid one on this immature, erroneous, naive and all-around terrible film. If there is one lesson to learn from this movie, it is simply how not to make an action flick, or any flick for that matter. Let's hope Zack Snyder learns this lesson and does not drop the ball so indecently with 2012's Superman: Man Of Steel. Is it too late to have high-hopes for Fast Five?
[Edited on 31/3/11 by Ult_Sm86]
Directed by Zack Snyder
Starring: Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, Carla Gugino & Jon Hamm
Based on Zack Snyder's previous directing gigs, walking into Sucker Punch with a sense of pending disappointment is an accurate way to start this film. The movie starts with a great big blow to your expectations and in its finale finishes the 109 minute masturbation-of-metal-core, by taking a dump all over any kind of redeemable story or plot. This movie is a solid 1 and I need to explain why.
First off, it becomes very hard to relate to characters who have no real names. We have Baby Doll, Sweet Pea, Rocket, Amber, & Blondie. I honestly thought they would eventually introduce Dusty Gozongas by the end of the film, but even the joy of ironic humor was lost to the writers of this self-absorbed flash-bang film. The girls move throughout the film in fake identities with fake ambitions and have nothing but the most honest intentions of escape from the severely over-the-top insane asylum called Lennox House. Unfortunately, most of the characters serve no purpose other than extra dialogue.
The film, right from the get-go, is a bit of a stretch. What could have easily taken 15 minutes to tell is stretched over a 109 minute time span of pointless noise and gyrating half-nude, young, female bodies as they tote guns and swords in completely outrageous scenarios. The story kicks off with the tragedy of the(improbably) 20 year old "Baby Girl" and how she came to the terrible Lennox House in Vermont. The rest of the movie after her introduction to the various cast members is a sexual explosion into metaphorical dream states and overtly stimulated action scenes that would have made Freud and the Wachowski brothers, respectively, sit down and check their pulses.
Sucker Punch unravels in a tactless style that reminds me of Snyder's previous film Watchmen. There is absolutely zero pay-off for the audience and there was a complete absence of a hero's journey. The hero is never redeemed, she never receives a beneficial lesson in life, and the entire film is an abysmal, gray, fight for a freedom. However the audience is never given anything to go on to believe the characters deserve their freedom. The only exception to that is Baby Doll who is responsible for the accidental death of her sister, whilst trying to protect her from her ravenous and greedy step-father.
When Baby Doll (Emily Browning) dances for men (arguably herself), she steps into a dream state where she fights evil in some poor metaphor that is meant to resemble her fighting for her freedom. During her "dream-fights" (for lack of a better term and a laziness to find a better one), Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish) and the other girls of the ward try to work together to retrieve various "artifacts" that Baby Doll needs to escape (the knife, the fire, the map, & the key).
There is never any definitive evidence in the film that the girls are being brutalized or exploited by "Blue" (a mobster/... warden? Apparently?) but most of the film happens in Baby Doll's (or was it Sweet Pea's?) head, so the evidence is circumstantial at best. While Baby Doll & Sweet Pea continue their state of denial, Dr. Vera Gorski (Carla Gugino) attempts to "save them" by having them dance their pain away, in hopes that they will be able to deal with their bodies are being whored out to men of power in Vermont. Again though, the evidence of that is shoddy being a good 80% of this movie is in the imagination of the girls. Freud really would have loved this movie.
The soundtrack is stuffed with poor 1990's alt-rock covers while simultaneously the story attempts to either pay homage (or possibly plagiarize) various works from over the years including (and not limited to): 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest', 'Girl Interrupted', 'Sailor Moon', 'Lord of the Rings', & the video game 'Bioshock'. It felt like various interns to Robert Rodriguez had gotten together after a long night of some anime-marathon and decided they needed to make a movie, set in 1955 Vermont, about school girls in an insane asylum, putting themselves into provocative situations while fighting with samurai swords, mechas, anti-aircraft guns, and a lot of 9 mm bullets. It was just a terrible film and is realistically a waste of just about every one's money.
There is zero originality throughout the entire picture and not a moment of hesitation or pause to further develop a plot that could have been easily explained in a simple fifteen minute short-film. It was like watching a live action of every poor anime to ever come out of Japan combined with the most apathetic writing conceivable. The fact that this movie took $82 million to make is a tad scary when one steps back and realizes how little emphasis on telling an actual story there was.
The only true positive point about this film is the special effects were astounding. Unfortunately for the visual CGI artists for the film, the sheer audio volume is enough to overwhelm that aspect and allow me to slap a solid one on this immature, erroneous, naive and all-around terrible film. If there is one lesson to learn from this movie, it is simply how not to make an action flick, or any flick for that matter. Let's hope Zack Snyder learns this lesson and does not drop the ball so indecently with 2012's Superman: Man Of Steel. Is it too late to have high-hopes for Fast Five?
[Edited on 31/3/11 by Ult_Sm86]