Sucker Punch Movie Review

Sucker Punch (2011)

Rent Sucker Punch on Amazon Video
Written by: Zack Snyder & Steve Shibuya (screenplay), Zack Snyder (story)
Directed by: Zack Snyder
Starring: Emily Browning, Vanessa Hudgens, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Carla Gugino, Oscar Isaac, Jon Hamm
Rated: PG-13
Watch the trailer

Plot
Baby Doll, a girl slated for lobotomy in a 1950s-era asylum, leads a group of  female inmates in an attempt to escape both their mental fantasy worlds and the actual institution where they are prisoners.

Verdict
It feels like it's trying to accomplish something, it just never quite gets there. Visually it's impressive, from composition to the fantasy worlds explored on screen. This is a great idea that feels like a comic book come to life. There just isn't much past the spectacle. The characters have very little depth. We have no reason to root for them and thus we don't triumph in their successes.  While there is the question of what really happened, the final few scenes present a horrifying truth.
Watch it.

Review
Zack Snyder is great at introductions. Even Justice League (my review) and Batman v Superman (my review) have good introductions. Based on the introduction to Batman v Superman I thought critics may have been too harsh. They weren't. The Watchmen (my review) has one of the best introductions, and  I'm a big fan of the movie.

The introduction for Sucker Punch is devoid of dialog as Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These) plays. It unfolds and sets up the main character Baby Doll and why she's placed in the asylum. This is dark, from the content to the story.

This plays like a music video, and a lot of Snyder's stuff does. This has an awesome aesthetic backed by a great soundtrack. The movie has a lot of style, more so than substance. This could toy with who Baby Doll is versus how she sees herself. We only see the real world in the beginning and end. I like the idea that she imagines this alternate parallel reality to cope with being imprisoned in the asylum. This parallel world, level one, is a brothel. During the movie I wished it had a closer link to reality, but the last few scenes do a good enough job of making the link and how things played out in the real world.

From crazy worlds to boss fights and scantily clad women, this feels like a video game. The enemies are in full armor and the women are in bikinis. For a movie that at times feels like a story about female empowerment, this is a weird conflict. While level one is where most of the movie occurs, level two is these worlds where battles occur during Baby's dances. These are always diversions to steal the objects to use in her planned escape. We explore monster inhabited feudal Japan, steam punk World War II, medieval orcs, and a future sci-fi city. These are dreams and not direct replicas, but it makes this movie feel big.

I wasn't sure what the battles were. It happens whenever Baby dances. It wasn't until I was thinking about this movie later that I realized the implication the last few scenes had. She was being assaulted and the dreams were her escape. I feel more sympathy for the character after the movie ended than while I was watching. I wish I had that emotion during the movie. For a movie that seems to empower females, assault against Baby is what moves the plot forward. She has a complete lack of control. Not only is she imprisoned, she's tortured too.

It's an interesting enough story with outlandish spectacle. I will give it to the movie that no dialog is better than cheesy action movie one liners. This movie does know it's strengths. The title, sucker punch, refers to the surprise at the end per Snyder. I don't know if that's the plot surprise or the realization of what's actually going on. He stated the movie was a critique of geek culture and the depiction of women, but this falls into a lot of the same tropes and does the exact same thing. Girls that kick butt isn't exactly empowerment, nor is having female leads sufficient. Throughout the movie men hold the power.

There's never a corollary between the real world and level one, leaving me wondering while I was watching if what I was seeing was really happening. It did more or less, but I was left to wonder more than I should have. Without the last few scenes you could write this off as a dream, though I'm glad it didn't go that way. Once the credits roll you can piece together what happened.