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| Sucker Punch (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
SUCKER PUNCH
Directed by Zack Snyder
Produced by Deborah Snyder
Zack Snyder
Screenplay by Zack Snyder & Steve Shibuya
Story by Zack Snyder
Starring
Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone
Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung, Carla Gugino
Production Companies: Warner Bros., Legendary Pictures
Cruel and Unusual Films
Distributed by Warner Bros.
Distributed by Warner Bros.
Release date March 25, 2011
This film was an ambitious undertaking with a huge scope. Over reaching a bit, too many ideas. Nevertheless the team pulled off an intriguing, if somewhat shallow visual smorgasbord. The photography often looks like a good quality video game. But at other times it is stunning. The concept could have lead to an amazing film.
Set designs were interesting, the film takes place out of time so it's all over with lots of green screen. For much of the movie the women are dressed like the chorus of Cabaret. And the action is gritty, sometimes convincing and sometimes not. While it looks and smells like a comic book/graphic novel it's not based on one.
The acting is uneven, sometimes okay, sometimes awful. It's one thing to write a movie like a graphic novel, but when you take it off the page and make it 3-D you need to have human characters. There are a lot of devices, like the psychiatrist having a Slavic accent. It's layered, pain on pain, struggle on struggle, loss on loss. It's confusing and, it's terribly sad. There's no redemption. There's no happily ever after.
Set designs were interesting, the film takes place out of time so it's all over with lots of green screen. For much of the movie the women are dressed like the chorus of Cabaret. And the action is gritty, sometimes convincing and sometimes not. While it looks and smells like a comic book/graphic novel it's not based on one.
The acting is uneven, sometimes okay, sometimes awful. It's one thing to write a movie like a graphic novel, but when you take it off the page and make it 3-D you need to have human characters. There are a lot of devices, like the psychiatrist having a Slavic accent. It's layered, pain on pain, struggle on struggle, loss on loss. It's confusing and, it's terribly sad. There's no redemption. There's no happily ever after.
The story centers on a young woman who is stuck in a terrible situation manipulated by what can only be called bad men. They institutionalize her with the objective on lobotomizing her. As the operation begins, she lives what the doctor (the doctor is not complicit in this level) says about controlling our reactions to life and creates a graphic novel style fantasy that even belies the scope of anime. That, according to the Wkipedia article on the movie was a goal of the main force behind the movie, Zack Snyder:
A while ago I had written a script for myself and there was a sequence in it that made me think, 'How can I make a film that can have action sequences in it that aren't limited by the physical realities that normal people are limited by, but still have the story make sense so it's not, and I don't mean to be mean, like a bullshit thing like Ultraviolet or something like that.
Zack Snyder as quoted in Wikipedia
I enjoyed the spectacle but felt something was missing as the Wise Man character, played by Scott Glenn says (paraphrased), Don't write checks with your mouth that you ass can't cash. Ultimately, that's what happens to this film. The effort was spread too thin across all the layers which didn't work.
While I was engrossed in the visuals and the pathos of the tale, I am glad I waited for the show to come out on HBO on Demand.
While I was engrossed in the visuals and the pathos of the tale, I am glad I waited for the show to come out on HBO on Demand.
