SUCKER PUNCH
Starring: Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish
Directed by: Zack Snyder
Runtime: 110 minutes
Rated PG-13 for thematic material involving sexuality, violence and combat sequences, and language.
I don’t like to read too many reviews before I go see a movie, but with Zack Snyder’s (300, Watchmen) new film “Sucker Punch”, it was difficult not to hear about how uniformly negative most reviews of the film were. It didn’t surprise me much, considering that most of the trailers portrayed the film as a visually stunning but thematically empty action flick centering around several beautiful women in their 20s killing robots, dragons and zombie Nazis.
As a result, I didn’t actually get around to seeing the film until the following weekend. However, once I did, I became convinced that everyone claiming that the movie was a brainless action flick had neglected to pay attention to what the movie was actually trying to say.
The story follows a young woman, nicknamed Babydoll, whose abusive stepfather throws her into a mental institution after she tries to kill him and ends up killing her younger sister instead. She’s given five days before the institution will lobotomize her, and as a result retreats along with the other patients into their imaginations in order to escape from the harsh reality of their day to day lives.
In this fantasy, the young women garner the confidence to try and escape, and attempt to do so by seducing the guards at the asylum (whom they visualize as their managers at a brothel). These action sequences so paraded by the advertising campaign serve to represent the scenes where the women seduce and distract the men in the asylum, and are thus visual manifestations of male fantasy (dragons, guns, hot girls, etc.).
This isn’t a film about action, even though the action looks amazing throughout. This is very much a film about female sexuality and its ability to totally incapacitate those who are susceptible. It also becomes a film about reality and imagination, and if the girls ever really try to escape at all, or if it is just part of their fantasy. The final question it asks its audience is whether or not it matters if they escape mentally but not physically, as the mind is really all we have.
This is a beautifully well-shot movie; with amazing cinematography combined with outstanding music, such as in the excellent opening sequence playing alongside a fantastic cover of Sweet Dreams are Made of This. However, this is not all that the movie has going for it, as it is one of the most deliriously entertaining, interesting, and passionate films made in recent years, and should not be passed up by anyone.
The movie won’t be equally appreciated by everyone, and many people will see it as a confusing and overly convoluted action flick, but this movie is a real work of art, and it legitimately has more to say about sexuality and perception of reality than just about any pretentious, arthouse movie done about said subjects. And this movie does it while being entertaining. For once, the advertisements were right. I was unprepared.
****(out of four)
SOURCE CODE
Starring: Jake Gylenhaal, Michelle Monahan
Director: Duncan Jones Runtime: 93 minutes
Rated PG-13 for some violence including disturbing images, and for language.
“Source Code” is a brisk, hour and a half thriller that not only provides for an amazingly well paced and thrilling time at the movies, but also manages to provide more surprises than most movies running two hours or more.
The film follows a soldier, Captain Coulter Stephens (played by Jake Gylenhaal) into a new computer program called the source code. This program allows someone to live out the last eight minutes of another person’s life, and allows them to interact with everything and everyone in that program.
There was a terrorist bombing on a train, and Stephens is sent into one of the passengers’ bodies during those final eight minutes in order to try and find out who the bomber was so that a later attack can be prevented. However, he begins to become attached to one of the female passengers on board the train, Christina (played by Michelle Monahan) and tries to find some way to save her.
Most of the movie consists of those eight minutes on the train playing over and over again like a twisted version of “Groundhog Day”. I won’t go into any more detail on what the rest of the movie entails, because I don’t want to ruin the surprises. It’s a great hook, and those eight minutes never even begin to drag.
Gylenhaal, despite a solid supporting cast, has to carry the entire movie almost by himself as he is in just about every single scene in the movie, and he doesn’t disappoint. He’s an interesting, intelligent protagonist who’s never made to do something stupid in order to progress the story.
The acting as a whole is very solid, and the screenplay is full of sharp dialogue and creative sequences, the music is good, the cinematography is beautiful, and it all comes together very nicely.
As a whole, however, this is a difficult film to review, because most of what makes this film so good constitutes the last act of the movie, so this will be a somewhat brief review. Without spoiling anything, this is a very, very good movie that while slightly too short, is full of both shocking and thought-provoking twists. However, if you aren’t moved by anything in this movie, then you are made out of stone.