SUCKER PUNCH (2011 - 12A)

Earlier this week, you may have seen my rant about the state of trailers these days, giving everything away and holding nothing back for the trip to the flicks itself. Well here is an example of a trailer doing it's job, getting me excited about a film, despite it being guilty of all of the things that I wagged my finger at in my earlier post. When seeing the Adjustment Bureau, I was hit by the explosion that is the Sucker Punch trailer. It seemed to live up to its name, it was exactly that. A slap in the chops. I'm not saying that from that 60 second glimpse I was convinced it was going to be a classic, but it played to my b-movie, action film sensibilities. It was OTT. And then some. Guns, explosions, slow motion fights. All by women wearing very little. It seemed to have it all.



I lent over to my girlfriend and before the thoughts made their way to my lips, she interrupted me - 'That's one to see with the boys'. She was right, of course, and so I booked four tickets for me and the chaps to see Zach Snyder's latest at the Imax, because if you're going to watch that sort of mindless anarchy and mayhem, you might as well do it on the biggest screen in the country.

When it comes to Zack Snyder you know what you're going to get. You also know what you aren't going to get. When you look at his previous efforts, Dawn of the Dead remake (actually very good in my opinion), 300 (rubbish and utterly forgettable) and Watchmen (a decent stab at a very difficult adaptation, all be it incredibly shallow) you know that slow-motion, violence, costumes and showy camera techniques will all be present. You also know that character, depth, plot, dialogue and intelligence are all likely to be AWOL. So with all of that in mind, my expectations were set - I anticipated something fun, something eye-catching and something a bit thrilling, but ultimately a bit crap. A bit like a theme park ride at Butlins but without the queues.

And there is a reason why there aren't any queues. Because it's rubbish. Proper rubbish. Not in a good way, the way I expected, the way Snakes in a Place or Howard the Duck is, but in a 'good grief, how on earth did anyone fund this?' kind of way. The story (I think we can call it that) is of a young girl (Emily Browning) who is admitted to a mental hospital for an attack on her violent father. She is about to undergo a lobotomy when we are transported to a sub-conscious that we presume is in her mind. Only it is a burlesque bar. She then meets some bloke in another layer of her mind, this time what looks like Ancient China and is told that in order to gain freedom, she must enlist other inmates (Vanessa Hudgens, Abbie Cornish, Jamie Chung and Jena Malone) and find some objects. A key, a map, fire, something else, zzzzzzzzzz. For the avoidance of any doubt for the viewer, these objects are all heavily signposted just in case we are tempted to use our brains at any point. It's basically a computer game. Get your objective, get the object, on to the next level.

And the levels are like that of video games, all different from the one before, a chance for Zach to show off some other visual trick or play with another fantasy of his. A battle ensues in each one, a music track playing over the top as the slow motion carnage plays out. Each time we are transported into a different level of the lead character's mind we have to endure the same device - camera zooms in on eye, camera pans out and we're in a different place. He couldn't even think of alternative ways of doing that. Every time it happened, my heart sank as we were heading into another 20 minutes of pointless bashing packaged into a pop video.

It must be said that the idea does remind me of Inception, different layers of reality, all woven over the top of one another, but in the case of Sucker Punch, it is done with so little though, care or intelligence that it falls apart and becomes instantly disposable. It's all just an excuse for Snyder to create sequences for the sake of it, all that are totally unrelated to one another. I wouldn't mind so much if it wasn't for the fact that his ideas are all completely derivative of something else. He steals tricks from Jurassic Park, a monster from My Name is Bruce, zombie Nazis, The Helghast from Killzone, the robots from I, Robot, dragons from any number of films. It's all been seen somewhere before. I know we are in an age where film makers are constantly referencing others, but come on Zach, there's referencing and then there's not having the power to think for yourself.

The action is good, solid stuff, some of it is even a bit jaw dropping, but that isn't enough to make a film I'm afraid Zach. It's all so samey, once you've seen one big fight in a weird place, you've seen them all. And then you add the fact that the bits in between are excruciatingly dull, terribly written (somehow there seems to be a screenplay attached to this) and acted by flat pack kits from Ikea, you have a something so awful, it's hard to comprehend.

It all gets very offensive at the end as it tries to tie up loose ends while at the same time keeping the viewer guessing (of course by this point I had given up caring, let along guessing). It also attempts to be philosophical about the human mind with a musing voice over that made me want to throw myself at the giant screen. Mr Snyder, please do not make this something that it is not. It's stupid, mindless, boring, plagiaristic codswallop that seems to have been put together by someone who has been lobotomised and deserves to be put in isolation forever, never to be seen again.

And Snyder's next project? The new Superman film. Only Kal-El can save us now.