SUCKER PUNCHED IN THE DICK

  

  Sucker Punch (2011) Warner Brothers D. Zack Snyder W. Zack Snyder and Steve Shibuya 

I know, first post in a long ass time. Get over it. I'm back! What possessed me to write here again? Read on. This is hands down one of the worst examples of a director who believes visuals and effects alone can make a film work. Studying film, scriptwriting, formula, etc. can teach you the basic rules of what should and shouldn't work. One huge thing, and the first you learn as a writer, is to SHOW and not TELL, meaning exposition is a cheap, worthless tool. Film is a visual medium, thus telling a story should be told as such. Imagine taking that rule in the complete opposite direction. Say, for example, you make a film based entirely on storyboards. Fuck a story, fuck a script, fuck dialogue, just some fancy pictures to turn into moving images. The first five minutes here are like a film school; it's telling you a story with the visuals alone, no dialogue is spoken until at least ten minutes in. It's actually really good, and it'd make a great short film. The rest of the film after that couldn't make sense without having to explain what's going on. It's just like filming those storyboards, only five different people envisioned them. It's a bad example of the rule. The rule should be show, don't tell...unless what you have to show is meaningless. Then scrap the piece of shit, call it a day. Snyder...I like Dawn of the Dead, think 300 is fairly awful, and I love Watchmen...so I'm pretty torn. I'm not counting that fucking Owl cartoon. Oh! They're fighting with their talons again! IN SLOW MO!!!! And yes, all of those tricks he's grown to use make an appearance, especially that slow mo. I like how he sets up shots, honestly. His vision is soild and defined. But when there's no substance behind it, it's akin to watching a 2 hour music video. One before music videos were a viable artform, and one that could spawn award winning visionaries.

Punch is a non-sensical train wreck; it's a culmination of everything Snyder does wrong as a filmmaker and a writer. Hell, there's no writing here, let's just skip that. The movie's an obvious attempt at creating a live action anime, and it succeeds at that -- it's visually compelling, yet soulless, just like 99% of anime I've seen (and I watched a lot as a teenager). Sucker Punch is like 5 short films smashed together with a silly, dull frame set around it...and then another frame for some reason set inside of that. This is not a cohesive collection by any means. The audience I saw it with was equally puzzled, and hearing one comment really hit the mark: "I've never been so bored and dreading more action sequences in my life...there are two more of these, what the fuck??" That about nails it. Mindless action is fantastic, I've grown up on this; Punch is downright boring. It's horribly paced, poorly edited, and entirely too long. 

When your action film grows tiresome during your action sequences, something's amiss. The dragon/castle siege sequence is the only bright sequence the movie has. Even worse is that this effects saturated event is drenched with some really awful CGI work. 300 succeeded a lot (if you want to call it that) BECAUSE of the style and look of the film. Using that exact same formula here fails miserably. Seen Doomsday? That was a Neil Marshall's shot at trying to combine elements from movies he loves and making a "mash-up" picture, and it's a ton of fun to watch because the homage is inspired, and the ideas work together. The things he lifts from are much better films, but he shows respect for the sources. Snyder does the same mash-up approach here: Annie (on acid), The Matrix, Alice In Wonderland, Saving Private Ryan, Reign Of Fire, Akira, etc. All much better movies, right? It just doesn't work, mostly because none of these fit together. It's like putting together five puzzles at once, but you're blind, or you have no picture box for reference. And instead of a homage here, it feels like cut and paste. Even Snyder's music choices are the most cliche, derivative pieces memorably used in much better films. Outside of Dylan, the music in Watchmen was misguided, trite, but mostly inoffensive...well, except for that Hallelujah sex scene. Jesus. 

Anyway, we initially get Where Is My Mind, so fucking famously forever entangled with Fight Club, and which should be retired. Our Lady Peace's cover of Let Forever Be brings up fond memories of that guilty pleasure The Craft. Army of Me was lifted from Tank Girl. Yes, I think Tank Girl's a better film than Sucker Punch. Yes, I'm aware Tank Girl is a nightmare.

Amanda Seyfried was initially signed on as the lead, instead opting to do Red Riding Hood. Either way, get a new agent, but at least I was able to fall asleep during Red. Poor Abbie Cornish and Emily Browning are far better than this, though I'm sure the idea of being a fem-soldier team sounded fun on paper. Probably fun to do too. Too bad we didn't have fun though! I so love watching actors talk about how much fun something was for them, especially when the product isn't ANY fun for the audience. Who fucking cares about your awesome 4 month vacation to Hawaii, and learning to surf, when you're doing a remake of Beach Blanket Bingo. No, they're not actually rebooting that fanchise...yet... JON! JON HAMM! SHIT, dude. Hamm's cameo is some sort of favor, clearly. His character gives old-school pit and hammer labotomys. I wanted one. The rest of the cast is just misguided, miscast, and misdirected. Oscar Isaac is particularly awful as the antagonist. He watched Malkovich, Oldman, Walken, and Washington -- guys who've chewed the shit out of the scenery to great effect as a heavy -- and pissed all up in they mouths. Drip drip drip, drip drip drip, pee on you... Snyder's lucky he's got Superman in motion already, and we may be lucky that he's not writing it...well, at least not from the ground up. 

I don't think Punch will perform beyond its first week, if that. I also can't see how executives could see this and think we need more of it...especially if it ain't makin' money. I'd seriously advise you against the curiosity to see this. It's all the fun of watching a video game someone else is playing, none of the fun of ACTUALLY playing it. I'd love to have played this movie, if you will, but as a bystander I felt tortured. 

-M