Sunday, March 27, 2011

Movie Review: Sucker Punch

Somehow, there's this indelible sense of global coolness to this film! Seriously. 

It's a no-brainer - on a technical standpoint, Sucker Punch was outstanding. Unbelievable visual style. Grand action sequences. Beautiful set designs. Awesome special effects. Brilliant sound mixing. Fantastic cinematography. Epic soundtrack. Yes, I sometimes tend to lapse into hyperbole and those crazy superlatives, but I'm not kidding here. I really wanted to shed a tear just from the quality of it's production alone. It's nothing groundbreaking, but - wait for another one! - it rocked my brain out of my skull. Haha. It was too much to handle.

But while everything looked and sounded ridiculously amazing, the story, I thought, seemed a bit thin at times. Don't get me wrong, I found the whole concept to be great and the way Zack Synder attacked it was actually good, but with everything running in full throttle, I somehow wanted the story to be right there with it. I mean, it was almost as if they knew they had a great premise, but decided to focus on the action sequences with more precision.

Which, ironically, became a setback for the film. Sure, the stunts and action scenes looked wonderful, but everything became heavy handed half way through that - at one point - it all seemed quite repetitive and began to appear rather generic. The "missions" though pretty clever wasn't very thematic as far as I could tell. I was actually hoping that they would become progressively more challenging and difficult to complete, but they didn't even go there.

Dialogues were also almost non-existent in the first 30 minutes of the movie, solely relying on the gorgeous visuals and incredible soundtrack to provide a means of understanding things. Yes, it somehow worked, but it definitely ruined the potential the movie could have. I mean, it wasn't until the latter parts of the film where I felt any sort of emotion towards the characters and even then it seemed somewhat lacking. There wasn't much depth to any of them, which was a bit unfortunate.

For what it's worth though - and in a film under this genre where acting is of second priority - I thought the cast did a fine job with what they were given. Some characters felt a bit flat, but I saw good moments here and there.

Ultimately, Sucker Punch was something to marvel at visually with several shortcomings. Sure, the relatively thin plot kept it from achieving greatness, but I stubbornly overlooked that fact due to the abundance of it's unique stylistic flair and, as I've said, it's sense of global coolness. Haha. Of course, if you require a strong narrative on a film, I'm pretty sure that you may not care for it so much. But if you just want to take a little escape from reality, I guess this is the movie to enjoy.

RATING: 7/10

8 comments:

Will said...

Naku, panu yan, mas importante sakin ang story and dialogue kesa visuals. Still, I'm looking forward to seeing this since last year pa :))

Ed said...

I would've wanted it to have at least a good story too. papanoorin ko pa rin toh. hehe

DAM THE NATION said...

Will: Yeah. It's relative. I like a good story too. But sometimes, movies are just made to be entertained and nothing else. If you know what I mean.

DAM THE NATION said...

Ed: The story isn't disappointing, it's just lacking depth. But still entertaining.

Mark said...

this film is one of those kinds where you watch it for the chicks in school uniform and skirts, not the story, hahaha.
movie for the 'dudes'. opposite of 300 LOL

DAM THE NATION said...

Mark: Haha. But did you like it, considering this film is for the 'dudes'? :P

Mark said...

oh i forgot to say, i didn't watch it. LOL
this is the first movie i commented without watching. lol

DAM THE NATION said...

Mark: Haha. Interesting. I thought you saw the film already. :P

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