Allons-y au Cinéma

This weekend I got to see the films Sucker Punch. I'm going to give you a brief run-through of what I thought of this film. From the director of films like 300 and Watchmen I think it's safe to say I was expecting a display of visual effects and intense action and the movie did not disappoint on either front. Whereas while 300 owns it's stunning effects and flaunts them proudly like a red Spartan cape over the nearly-naked bronzed body of a beautiful but essentially rudimentary story, and Watchmen's character-driven, complicated, non-linear story strains at the seams with fountains of action and showiness leaking through the holes in it's silver screen rendition. This time all bets are off, the film is a helpless crash test dummy thrown into the hands of a mad scientist equipped with fight scene generators and lots of TNT. The result is a mixed bag. The story walks the line between the two movies, it's less intricate than Watchmen but the shifting between the world-views of the insane asylum inmates and the factual reality of their world causes it to quickly lose the elegant simplicity of 300 and makes the movie slightly confusing. The acting ranges from Oscar Isaac who is a perfectly sinister and devious character, to Carla Gugino who manages but struggles to act with an accent, down to Emily Browning as the main character who is good at looking sad and badass with extremely limited in between emotions. Of course it would be a crime to omit a mention of the soundtrack from a Zack Snyder film which is of course inspirational, songs from artists like Massive Attack make some of the action sequences little short of thrilling to watch. These portions of the movie are also hit or miss, the WWI battle and the fight at the Japanese temple are some of the best I've ever seen. But the later two, the dragon, and the train full of robots might be a little less exhilarating if not for being worse, then just because at that point my capacity to be wowed has diminished. The movie is almost entirely concerned with action and the sexiness of the girls, if you like that then you will enjoy this film but don't watch it because you're expecting a brilliant story. The two things Zack Snyder needs, simpler plots would make him a great replacement for James Cameron who likes simple stories with pretty pictures but doesn't have the same cinematic deftness and excellent taste in music that Snyder can execute. Two: if action is the main point of your movie, make us want the action, not get tired of it. It's not hard, a little buildup is all I ask for. One of the major successes of Watchmen is that fight scenes are precious few and far between so when we see them they're quite exciting to watch.