Sucker Punch

Well, I said this was going to be the best movie ever or a piece of rancid crap when I first saw the trailer. And, shock of shock, I was wrong. It was crap, yes, but not rancid. Once I let go of hope that it would gain any substance, I enjoyed the over the top steampunk/mecha/kung fu action scenes...to a point. I'm CGI'd out at this point, especially blatently obvious CGI sets and backgrounds. Also, I didn't really ever get the point of the story which felt like it was based on some emo band's concept album about an abused, persecuted girl's fight to be herself. Or stop cutting or something. Let's forget this, Zack Syder, and focus on Superman.

Then again, Don Draper showed up at the end so who am I to complain that much. Still, MINUS

Playlist: Machete

Awesome. Coolest movie of the year. Let's see: Danny Trejo as the baddest Mexican on the planet (I'd love to see him in a Proactiv ad), Jessica Alba, Michelle Rodriguez, Steven Seagal, Jeff Fahey, Don Johnson, Lindsay Lohan (either naked or in a nun's habit), Cheech Marin, and the resurgent Robert Deniro doing the kind of comedic turn he should have been doing all along (get this man a Ben Stiller restraining order). And the best use of intestines. Ever.

Robert Rodriguez makes fun movies. His Planet Terror blew away Quentin's Death Proof and his Grindhouse faux-trailer turned into this full-length kickass fest. And RobRod also seems to get fun performances out of his actors. Jessica Alba, in particular, is more life-like than she has been since, well, the guess-who-directed Sin City. Speaking of Jess, since she's a classy dame, they digitally removed her clothes for her shower scene. More proof that technology is evil. Sic em, Neo.

Here's some fun trivia from IMDB:

As Robert Rodriguez tells it, after conceiving of the character of Machete and telling Danny Trejo about it, Rodriquez started receiving phone calls at random hours of the day from Danny, trying to convince him to make the film. One day, Robert said to Danny that he was busy and asked why Danny can't just send a text message instead of constantly calling, to which Danny Trejo replied: "Machete don't text." Machete says this exact phrase in the film.

Playlist: The Losers

I suppose it speaks to the maturation of graphic novels as a source material that our expectations have now become aligned with the mainstream. We've reached the stage where not every adaptation is an event onto itself, much the way audiences grew into their comfort with noir or sci-fi or western stories.

For a convenient example, The Losers is a lesser known comic, and rather pedestrian as far as inventiveness. It's simply a story, and for all the bemoaning the death of originality in Hollywood (it was a suicide), the men with the money are in the business of selling us stories. Right now that resource is in greatest supply in the pages of comic books. Of course, the more they exploit this resource, the more product quality will regress to the mean. Listen, if Christopher Nolan made six movies a year, they're not all going to be good. That's not how it works.

Which isn't a long and winding way of saying The Losers isn't good. It's not, but it's not bad either. It sort of falls into that grey area fattening the middle. It reminded me of a second-tier 80s Schwarzenegger film (think Commando). It's back-up entertainment. Fun filler. If we insist on watching as many movies as we do, we can't also insist on brilliance every time out. You can be picky or you can sleep around. You can't do both. Unless you're rich.

As for the movie, we have a Special Ops squad called The Losers for no explained reason--Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Watchmen's Comedian, who looks like Robert Downey Jr.'s older brother), Idris Elba (the great Stringer Bell whose charisma is sadly underused), Chris Evans (who builds on his reputation as someone who makes anything he's in better), Columbus Short (the guy who I didn't like in Armored), and Oscar Jaenada (the silent sniper, but shows enough to bear watching)--who get screwed over by Jason Patric's ultra-hammy CIA psychopath. See, even though The Losers have probably killed countless people through the years, they secretly all have hearts of gold. And, yes, this does sound like The A-Team.

Now, in order to get back their good names as professional murderers, they team up with the unnaturally attractive (almost annoying so) Zoe Saldana who just so happens to have her own anti-Patric agenda. A lot of punch-shoot-boom follows. There is a very cool scene with Evans (of course) shooting security guards with his fingers.

My only real gripe is with director Sylvain White, who you might not know from anything. Unlike those 80s action films, White cannot just let the ridiculousness of the story carry the show. He has to "direct." It's over-stylized to the point of distraction as if White was determined to go upside our heads with his bag of tricks like Sean Penn and his pillowcase full of soda cans in Bad Boys. There's even a slo-mo shot of the whole gang walking which was cool as hell when Tarrantino did it and funny as hell when Swingers did it. 15 years ago.

Playlist: Clash of the Titans

So how bad was it? That's all it comes down to, right? This thing was panned more than Northern California in 1849. So? So, it was ok.

I think most of the derision for this came from the fact that it was released as an upconverted 3-D money grab by a desperately clueless studio. You'd think these geniuses would have learned from their past attempts at colorization--half-assed products will always look half-assed. Not that this was whole-assed to begin with.

My biggest problem going in with this state-of-the-art CGI extravaganza of a remake was that I enjoyed the original so much precisely because it was so old school lo-fi. And that is what ultimately kills this movie. Now, that's not nostalgic bitterness. By all means, take the new technology and make a full-throttle adventure film set in that world (though considering how rich Greek mythology is, why not take a weekend and come up with a new story. Or why not just make a God of War movie?.) Technology is good. But stop using your computer as a storytelling crutch. SFX characters do not automatically equal characters. At least not characters anyone cares about (or as in the case of monsters, characters anyone is scared of). And, no, I have no idea who I'm speaking to right now. As FOB (Friend Of the Blog) Paul has said about video games, too much realism blurs the line of fantasy, which is what games and movies like this should feel like. I think we may have reached the technological event horizon of fun.

Speaking of CGI characters, I have to call a time out on Sam Worthington. I liked him in Terminator Salvation, but it turns out there was a reason he was so effective as a robot. Here, just like in Avatar, he's screen filler. He looks like a leading man, but he has the personality of background scenery. Maybe that's just how he's being directed. Maybe it's just about hitting his marks against the green screen and looking tough. But he sums up the ultimate problem with this movie: it looks fun, but it's not.

And director Louis Leterrier doesn't help. This is an action movie and the action scenes are forgettably dull. Poor editing and worse musical choices. That's a little surprising since I thought he did a good job with the last Hulk film. One of the only good things this has going for it is Gemma Arterton, who's an actress to keep an eye on. Not that she has much to work with here.

So, yeah, it's not awful. But it's not necessarily good, either. If it were on TV, there would be worse things to watch.