A Clever and Enjoyable Scam, Sucker Movie Review
I am a huge advocate of supporting Australian Cinema, particularly good Australian Cinema such as Mad Max, Red Dog, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and so on. That’s not to say there aren’t any bad Australian movies, there are plenty. Going into Sucker, I was honestly unsure as to where on the spectrum it would fit. Would it be an Australian Classic or an Australian Disaster?
Directed by Ben Chessel and written by Lawrence Leung, Sucker is a con movie with a fair amount of heart and plenty of enjoyment to be had. After being caught cheating in an exam, teenager Lawrence (John Luc) is sent to live with his uncle away from the city as punishment. But his life takes an unexpected turn when he meets The Professor (Timothy Spall) and his daughter Sarah (Lily Sullivan), professional con artists who take Lawrence under their wing to teach him how to con, scam and lie.
There were a lot of misconceptions I had about this movie going in, most of which ended up surprising me more than anything. Going off of the cast list I had assumed that it would be a silly comedy about a bunch of con artists who get up to assorted shenanigans and it wouldn’t offer much beyond that. But after seeing the film I was surprised to find that Sucker actually has a lot of heart. It’s kind of like the 2013 film Now You See Me, except Sucker is on a much smaller scale, has well developed characters and doesn’t go up its own ass with plot twists that don’t make sense.
On the technical side, even though this isn’t a movie with an overwhelmingly high budget it was still relatively solid. The editing during the film was usually very well done, particularly during the scenes where the scams were involved. Throughout the movie you follow Lawrence as he gets to know these scams, and seeing how they played out during the film were probably some of my favorite parts. I really enjoyed watching the very clever and inventive ways that they would con money out of people; every single con is well explained and explored.
The biggest surprise I have concerning the film is the acting, mainly that of John Luc as Lawrence. The reason I say this is because I am only familiar with Luc through his work as MyChonny on Youtube where he produces very over the top comedic content, which is kind of what I expected him to be like in this movie. Although there are some comedic scenes they aren’t really the focus of the film, in some respects it’s a lot closer to a drama. Seeing Luc play this role and play it well was surprising, although not completely perfect I am interested in seeing him in more films in the future.
Timothy Spall is perfectly cast as The Professor; he was another character going off the films trailer I thought would be more cartoonish than he actually was. But as the film goes on you see more and more layers to him, he was well written and developed which made the movie so much better. The same could be said for Lily Sullivan playing Sarah, The Professors daughter, again I assumed she was just there to be the generic love interest of the film, but she turned out to be so much more. Basically what I got from this movie is that I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover…or a movie by its trailer in this case.
But, when it comes to con movies like this they absolutely live or die by their endings. Now I won’t spoil it because that would be a douche move. But at first I was certain that the film was heading towards a particular ending where the main characters would pull off a big scam and that’ll be that, happy endings all around!
But it didn’t exactly play out like that at all. Instead it had me second guessing myself until the credits rolled and even then there were still a lot of things I was unsure about. However I will say that it probably has one of my favorite instances of breaking the third wall that I’ve seen done in a movie in a long while.
In the end Sucker is a film that took my expectations and kind of flipped them on their head. It is a well-acted movie that could have easily been an absurd, over the top, goofy comedy but instead took the route of an interesting con movie with fleshed out characters and surprising turns. I won’t say it’s perfect, there were some minor characters I didn’t exactly love and some slight editing issues but in the end I did not feel like a sucker for paying to see Sucker. Lawrence Leung did a fantastic job writing it and John Luc did a great job as the main character, I look forward to seeing what he does next.
I give Sucker a final score of 8 out of 10
If you wish to see Sucker and you live in Australia it is currently screening around the country from December 1st to 9th in selected cinemas where you can meet John Luc and Lawrence Leung yourself. If you are unable to attend those screenings than I believe it will be available for streaming in January of 2016, for more information go to the official website or follow Sucker on Facebook.
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