Lowlife loser Harley forms a fragile partnership with enigmatic fighter Buchinsky to topple fight baron Maitland. But why is Harley so keen to beat Maitland at his own game? And how far is he willing to go in order to bring the big man down...?

Sucker Punch is an independent movie starring Danny John-Jules (Red Dwarf, Blade 2) as a down on his luck fight promoter who thinks that his fortunes are about to change when he discovers a new fighter who seems unbeatable.

The basic plot behind the movie is fairly sound, but the biggest problem is that the end result isn't given as much of a polish as it deserves. For starters some of the dialogue is unbelievable and, as a consequence, the acting suffers greatly in a lot of scenes.

Then there's the fact that it appears that some of the scenes didn't go through an ADR mix - there seems to be a few too many instances where the voice of a character alters in volume between each camera angle, making it a little distracting. Also John-Jules's coat strobes quite badly on screen and I was surprised that wardrobe didn't fight to have it changed for something a little less problematic. To be honest though, we received a time coded preview disc so this may not have been the finished mix of the movie.

Harley is by far the most interesting character and it's a shame a little more focus wasn't placed on his day to day comings and goings - showing more of how down on his luck he was and that any money he had he lost gambling. While we get to learn about his past, and why he has issues with Maitland, I think if the audience had been able to get inside his head a little more then the whole movie would have been a lot more satisfying at its conclusion.

Personally, I'd have stripped away all of the scenes with Buchinsky starting an affair with one of Maitland's girls, and instead followed Harley and Weed's daily life a little more. At it's heart I felt that this movie was really about Harley and his total lack of business sense. He's a rogue, but a good guy; an Arthur Daily character (although a lot more three dimensional than George Cole's most famous role) who it's hard not to like. Buchinsky is merely Harley's meal ticket out of a long line of financial bad luck and we really didn't need to have Buchinsky's fleshed out in any way. In fact I think it would have made his character all the more intriguing if we never really got an insight into the man at all. All we really need to know is that he's a born fighter.

As I mentioned earlier, some of the dialogue is pretty poor - even a little naive in places - and so I was unsure whether Kara Scott (playing Harvey's wife Mandy) just couldn't act, or if the dialogue was just undeliverable. Scott was also the movie's line producer and is better known for being a TV show host, so it's not as though she's a stranger to the camera. In instances like this I'm inclined to blame the script and the director, especially when there are a few too many performances here of below par acting. In fact I seriously believe that John-Jules saves this film from being a bit of a mess. The movie really does rest on whether or not the audience warms to Harley and is routing for him to succeed in turning his life around.

I got the feeling that John-Jules may have ad-libbed some of his script, or changed his dialogue a little, allowing him to come across as the only truly believable character. Harley is also the only character, with the exception of Jimmy Kent's slow witted Weed, that has any comedy to handle. In fact John-Jules is the only actor in this movie that has more than one range to play - we get comedy, tragedy (briefly) and straight acting all of which helps to flesh out his character into a loveable, misguided rogue. Now I'd better shut up before I start sounding like I'm John-Jules's agent.

This movie also has some great choreographed fight sequences and stunts. There are at least two stunts where it looked as though someone really might have been hurt.

I really want to be able to give this movie a much higher mark than I'm going to. But I'm looking at the end result and asking myself: "Would I be happy spending £15 to watch this?" and I'm afraid I wouldn't.

The biggest shame is that there is a bloody fantastic movie in here. If only all of the lumps had been knocked out of the script, and the character of Harley had been delved into a little deeper, this could have been one of the best UK independent movies to be released for some time. What we end up with is a product that, like Harley, shoots for gold and narrowly misses.

6

Darren Rea