Sucker Punch (2008) User Reviews

Awful movie

[mainmanvern · 2/10 · 2 January 2010]

I watched this movie because it had Tom Hardy in it. Unfortunately, it didn't have Tom Hardy in it. At least not in any scenes I saw. It looks and feels like it was made by a 16 year old with a $200 camera and more favors to call in than sense or film-making abilities. I get the feeling that this movie has such a high star count because it's the filmmakers friends rating the film. The fight scenes are poorly choreographed and the acting is pretty mediocre. But that says nothing for the lighting, camera work, direction, editing or script, all of which are in a league of their own in stinkiness. What was Tom Hardy thinking? These guys didn't even bother to white balance the camera. The lighting doesn't match color temperatures within the same scenes throughout the film. There are cutaways and inserts that look like they aren't even part of the same scene. Then, instead of lighting the actors when they are in front of windows, but inside, they allow the windows to blow out and the actors to be underlit. Then, the camera is constantly crossing the lines, and with near to no establishing shots, you have almost no idea where the characters are, in relation to one another. Finally, the lead actor is terrible as the silent and mysterious tough guy. Steven Segal on his worst day could have played this character less transparent and with more depth.

A very low budget poorly acted street fighting movie that is only for people who LOVE this genre. Pretty bad to me. I say C-

[cosmo_tiger · 16 October 2011]

"I might be wrong, but I'm guessing you know something that I don't." A struggling fight promoter Ray 'Harley' Davidson (Fargas) is running out of money and respect in town. When he meets Charles Buchinsky (Alexander) he thinks he found his way back to the top. If you absolutely love UFC and street fighting you will like this. If you love watching street fighting you will like this. If you enjoy watching movies like that but aren't totally psyched about them then this may be a struggle to get through. I have seen worse, but I'm pretty sure the budget was around 100 bucks. The fighting was pretty fake, the acting was not good, but again, if you like movies like this that doesn't matter. This movie was made a few years ago, and like "Bending All The Rules" is only now coming out because an actor who is in it for five minutes (Tom Hardy in this one) is hot right now. Overall, a movie for people that love this kind of thing. If, like me, you think a few are OK then I would look for something else. I give it a C-.

Would I watch again? - No, I almost didn't make it through once.

*Also try - Fighting & Locked Down

Wooden

[alan-sammons-741-953975 · 1/10 · 18 May 2010]

Bad! Think this DVD will be going back as faulty and claiming my money back on it ASAP! Visually the grading's terrible, plus the sound's everywhere as is the acting, some of that is just dire! Music well? Feels like a 2nd year student production with nothing of Layer Cake or Snatch. Just wooden! Fails on so many levels which aren't even worth developing on here.

Are they trying to rip off some great British gangster films like The Long Good Friday and newer films? Don't know? But where it fails is to build up any tension, that's the one thing in this genre and with a lack of character development, well? Plus being poorly graded, bad sound etc etc... Some good actors there but they clearly struggled as did others.

crap

[lil_alx · 1/10 · 23 July 2008]

this film isn't even worth the time or enormous effort in watching, just by watching the trailer you will understand the reasoning to which i am giving this film a one out of ten. And believably enough that it is enough to bore you to tears to the point where you would rather die than continue to watch the next thirty seconds of highlights, the acting is worse than mediocre and is as if the people were told the lines and mechanically told to re site them, i can not act to save my life however i could of done a better job myself and stopped people from wanting to commit suicide, not very entertaining at all with the people speaking as if pretending it was real, no story line, unrealistic fight scenes with bad prosthetic blood. incredibly bad use of Geordie language which is embarrassing to the Geordie accent. this review is just from clips and the trailer to which i saw no reason to torture myself any longer and put myself through the whole film. quite frankly it is the biggest flop of a film i could have ever imagined and such a shame considering the cause the money is going to .

A very raw, low budget film. Ultimately well done.

[seanhmoss6 · 7/10 · 19 July 2021]

This is what I look for in a low budget indie film. The story and the script are quite good. I very much enjoyed the acting as well as the soundtrack. The cinematography was a bit rough. If it was unintentional I would chalk that up to the budget. If it was intentional it definitely added to the picture. I, as many of the reviewers, was attracted to the film because Amazon Prime listed Tom Hardy with top billing. Sadly, this is not the case. In fact in the credits, he goes by Edward Thomas Hardy. A bit disappointing. Nonetheless, it is a very good watch.

And to correct a user reviewer, the character Harley was NOT portrayed by Antonio Fargas. He was portrayed by Danny John-Jules who is a very good actor.

Antonio Fargas is in the film. Anyone who knows anything knows he is best known for playing Huggy Bear in the 1970's show Starsky & Hutch.

Blink and miss HARDY

[essmom · 1/10 · 25 October 2019]

Despite my modest expectations for Hardy to appear as one of the opposing boxers, this is not the case. In fact, Tom Hardy seems to appear only very briefly in one scene as car mechanic "Rodder" (who says "Pop the hood"). If you are his fan, do not watch unless just to fast forward to that scene.