What the Hell Week: Sucker Punch

 One of the most overused terms to deride a movie is to call it "masturbatory" - it's a quick and easy way to dismiss the filmmaker for dwelling in their obsessions while ignoring anything else in the movie. I've probably used it before (I can't remember off the top of my head where) and the Cap'n sees it all the time on the internet, where reviews are as numerous as websites devoted to fetishes. Why that comparison? Because as much as I'd like to find anything else to say about Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch, invariably I'm left with a list of fetishes on display; PG-13 porn for geeks.

Baby Doll (Emily Browning) and her sister (Frederique De Raucourt) are left alone with their abusive Stepfather (Gerard Plunkett) when their mother dies. While trying to save her sister from the loathsome guardian, Baby Doll accidentally kills her sister and is sent to an asylum. Her Stepfather bribes Blue Jones (Oscar Isaac) in order to ensure Baby Doll receives a lobotomy when the Doctor (Jon Hamm) arrives in five days. Under the care of Doctor Vera Gorski (Carla Gugino), Baby Doll imagines the asylum is instead the "Club," where she dances for male clients, as well as other seductive techniques. Baby Doll discovers her dance transfixes men, and she hatches a scheme to escape. In order to find five items needed to be free, Baby Doll enlists the help of fellow dancers / inmates Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), Rocket (Jena Malone), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), and Amber (Jamie Chung), who assist her in separate fantasy world under the tutelage of the Wise Man (Scott Glenn). Can Baby Doll and the others find the five items and escape before the Doctor / High Roller comes to claim her?

 The Russian doll approach to Snyder's story serves little purpose, because the further removed from the reality of the asylum we get, the less invested we become in the peril for Baby Doll and the other girls. Fights with Giant Samurai wielding Gatling guns or Steampunk German Zombies are devoid of the peril we need to feel because the audience knows this is just the fantasy world Baby Doll escapes to while she's dancing in another fantasy world to avoid dealing with reality. There's no sense of tension, no concern for her well being because WE KNOW SHE'S NOT REALLY THERE. Imagine if every action set-piece in... let's say, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, took place while Sarah Connor was dreaming in her cell. After the first one, the dream where Kyle Reese comes back and she escapes and is nuked, we'd lose any and all interest in the jeopardy she faced. The first one only works because we don't realize it's a dream, but Snyder shows his audience up front this is all make-believe. None of it is happening and has minimal bearing on reality.

 I have some inkling why Snyder decides not to show Baby Doll's dance in the "Club" reality: the descriptions of what she does would certainly rob him of a PG-13 rating, but that's not what I suspect is going on. The real problem with Sucker Punch is that these fantasy breaks happen to fulfill a particular kind of geek fetish, one that Snyder must have as much as the audience the film was designed for: hot chicks kung-fu fighting monsters. Sucker Punch is one excuse after another to put swords and guns in the hands of scantily clad women and turn them loose against geeky enemies, like robots and samurai and dragons. If you get your kicks watching Catholic school girls with thigh high boots bloodlessly chopping up bad guys, good news; Sucker Punch has it in spades.

 And when they aren't doing flips that conveniently provide upskirt shots, Snyder finds other ways to engage your libido in a theatrically friendly way: like girls in their PJ's in the rain? How about ballerina strippers? Sexy nurses? Fishnet stockings and lace armbands? Pigtails? Leather bustiers?Yup. Please don't buy into the argument that this film is in any way "female empowerment." Just because all of the men in the film (save for Scott Glenn's "mentor" character) are lecherous pigs doesn't mean that the girls are suddenly "empowered" while wearing clothes designed to get fanboys all hot. It's a hollow sentiment, one designed by Snyder and others to dodge the "objectification of women" argument. The men are pigs, the women are objects, and the only thing important is that the ladies look "cool" while they look good for the predominantly adolescent male audience.

 So, does it look "cool"? I guess, but what's the point to all of it? The action sequences don't serve the narrative in any way - they're just there to look "cool" and enable Snyder to get all of his fetishes in one place. I haven't mentioned the music yet, in part because I was trying to forget the awful covers of "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These)," "White Rabbit," and "Where is My Mind." They exist to underscore otherwise arbitrary decisions (like the white rabbit painted on a robot) and only reminded me of Moulin Rouge, which Tuesday's Retro Review makes clear is a bad thing.

 I'll go this far: Zack Snyder, who has to this point adapted or remade his way into geek cinephiles' hearts (Dawn of the Dead, 300, Watchmen, Legend of the Guardians), at least tried to make a film not based on something else. While I don't love Watchmen or 300, I do like Dawn of the Dead, and I have to give Snyder credit for wanting to make a film wholly of his own. Think of Sucker Punch as Snyder's Inception; it's a big risk in a culture that likes recycled everything, and as much as Christopher Nolan succeeded, Snyder did not. Yet. I suspect Sucker Punch will be very popular on DVD and Blu-Ray, where it has an extra 18 minutes in an "extended cut."

 Now, I won't be watching that cut, but if you're inclined to watch vapid, monotone acting coming from dead eyed Emily Browning, as long as you can see her panties once every six minutes, then a longer cut that jumps from PG-13 to R will be right up your alley. Me? I was bored at the one hour mark, and Sucker Punch never won me back. While I give Snyder credit for not adapting something else, it doesn't mean that being original and failing is any better than recycling successfully.

Blogorium Review: The Town

editor's note: there will be no Video Daily Double today, as the Cap'n winds down his "year end reviews" leading up to this weekend's 2010 Year in Film recap.

Ben Affleck's The Town is a pretty by-the-books heist film saved by fine performances and Affleck's affinity for Boston, Massachusetts. It's not that the heist story is bad, per se, but that if you've seen any heist movie (Criss Cross, The Score, Heat, Inception, or even, well, Heist), then you can figure out the angles from the beginning of the film and pretty much map out where The Town is going. Admittedly, that's not a bad thing, because heist movies, like slasher films, are sort of like jazz or blues in that way - you know where major beats are, but the way the story gets there is what's interesting.

Affleck, who co-wrote the film with Peter Craig and Aaron Stockard (based on a Chuck Hogan novel), stars as Doug McRay, a former hockey prospect turned bank and armored car robber in Charlestown, a neighborhood in Boston known for a tough life and criminal behavior. Doug's father, Stephen (Chris Cooper) has been in jail since he was young, so McRay was raised with James Coughlin (Jeremy Renner) and may or may not be the father of James' sister, Krista (Blake Lively)'s daughter. The other members of McRay and Coughlin's "crew" are Albert McGloan (Slaine), the driver, and Desmond Elden (Owen Burke), the electrical guy. The boys answer to "Fergie" Colm (Pete Postlethwaite), a drug pusher running a florist front.

When they rob a bank early in the film, James' short temper gets the best of him and he begins beating the bank manager, while Doug tries to coax co-manager Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall) into opening the safe. As collateral, they take Claire hostage and let her go blindfolded, but when James discovers she lifes four blocks from their apartments, Doug decides to spy on her. They have a "meet cute" at a laundromat, and Doug's easygoing charm wins her over, much to James' chagrin. Their next heist(s) compound the desire of Detective Dino Ciampa (Titus Welliver) and FBI Agent Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm) to nail the crew before Coughlin's murderous impulses harm anyone else. Doug wants out, Colm and Coughlin won't let him, so he agrees to do "one last job" before leaving with Claire for better opportunities.

I really don't need to tell you anything else about the plot, because that setup is so familiar, so specific to the sub-genre (and nearly all film noir), that you can probably guess who lives, who dies, when it happens, and where things begin to fall apart for McRay and his crew. What's different, what largely works in The Town's favor, is twofold; the pacing, which is surprisingly languid for films known for their preference towards tension, and the Charlestown setting, which gives Affleck the ability to flesh his characters out in unexpected ways.

Affleck's directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, was a film I was tremendously fond of, partially because of its moral ambiguity but mostly as a result of making the location a character in the film. The Town isn't quite as successful, mostly due to the lack of urgency during every scene - including the robberies - but in taking it easy with the pacing, little flourishes emerge that separate this film from other heist movies. Typically, the hero is a bad guy with a good heart, tied to some maniac that's going to endanger them all (Heat) or double cross him at the end (The Score), but Doug McRay is only a nice guy in that he doesn't hurt people during robberies. He maintains the lie to Claire about who he is or why they "met" until well after Frawley tells her the truth, and while his passion for kids and renovating a local hockey arena is genuine, the act (semi-spoilers ahead) come from money stolen at Fenway Park after a Red Sox series.

Renner's Coughlin is the "loose cannon" character, but he also cares about Doug and depends on him like a brother. His rationale for why Doug "can't leave" comes not from a purely psychotic decision, but from something he did to protect McRay and never told him about. The boy-men solve their problems with violence, and when Doug finds out that Claire's car was vandalized by guys he knows, he brings James along for a little home invasion and aggravated assault without thinking twice about it. Whether or not Krista's daughter is his, Doug feels no compulsion to stay with her when the opportunity to be with Claire arises. The interpersonal relationships that usually are reduced to quick, identifiable archetypes have some room for fleshing out in Affleck's two hour cut (there's a nearly two and a half hour extended cut on the Blu-Ray I have not yet sampled, but apparently it contains more procedural footage with Welliver and Hamm).

The cast is uniformly great, and keep the leisurely pace worthwhile: Affleck and Renner have the lion's share of screen time, but Rebecca Hall is very good in the thankless role of girlfriend / police pawn. Jon Hamm motivated, clever, and ruthless Agent Frawley nearly steals the film away from Affleck (who is charming as ever, and finally manages to shake off the stench of years of bad movies), particularly with the line "you do realize this is a national agency, don't you?" near the end. Titus Welliver, who many Lost viewers will recognize immediately, gets a quick shot of nuance and backstory during an interrogation with Doug, and only Postlethwaite and Lively seem to be saddled with one-note characters: the crime boss who rules with an iron fist and the delinquent mother more interested in drugs than her child (a similar part to Amy Ryan's in Gone Baby Gone, but less developed in The Town).

The Town is a pleasant continuation of the shift in Ben Affleck towards writing, developing, and directing his own projects, and he has a fine eye behind the camera. It was nice to see him in front again, and while I'm curious to see if he ever plans to make a film set outside of Massachusetts, audiences are well served by putting aside memories of Gigli, Surviving Christmas, and Paycheck in order to give Ben Affleck a second go-round. Even if the song is one you've heard before, he makes it worth listening to.