Sucker Punch | Review
Zack Snyder’s latest offering can be described in just a few, simple words: A sexy-fied video-game for pre-teen boys. ‘Sucker Punch’ is an imaginative and ambitious film, but imagination and ambition doesn’t make for a coherent film, nor a really good one. If the film’s plot mechanics and character development were worked on more, ‘Sucker Punch’ could have been one of the most enjoyable films (at least for male audiences).
‘Sucker Punch’ revolves around a young woman who’s sent to an insane asylum after she accidentally kills her little sister while trying to defend her against their abusive step-father. This young woman, given the name Babydoll (Emily Browning, from ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’), is to be lobotomized in the institution as organized by her step-father. Before the lobotomy happens, however, Babydoll retreats into an imaginary world where she and other females work at a brothel. In this imaginary world, Babydoll befriends four other scantily-dressed women: The sisters Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish) and Rocket (Jena Malone); Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens); and Amber (Jamie Chung).
In the brothel world, the girls work for a mobster named Blue (Oscar Isaac). Their jobs are to dance and impress important “investors” of Blue’s, and it just so happens that Babydoll dances the best, which impresses everyone at the brothel. Whenever Babydoll does her trademark dance, though, she retreats into another imaginary world where she and her friends are ass-kicking fighters. This secondary-imaginary world takes place in four different “realms” of sorts, which includes a snowy, feudal Japan; a steam-punked World War II; a dragon-guarded castle; and a futuristic monorail full of robots.
All of these secondary-imaginary worlds are beautiful, and a lot of thought definitely went into the construction of each. However, not enough depth, or even importance, is given to each world. They’re simply good-looking backdrops to show off the female characters’ fighting capabilities.
I failed to mention the reason why there’s a secondary-imaginary world in the first place. Well, the secondary world complements the first imaginary world. In the secondary imaginary world, the girls are on a mission to locate five seemingly random items, including a map, fire, a knife, and a key. The fifth “item” is a mystery, according the man who sends the girls on this journey in the secondary-imaginary world, The Wise Man (Scott Glenn).
Everything that takes place in the secondary-imaginary world mirrors actions that occur in the first imaginary world; for example, when the girls find a map in the second world, it mirrors the girls stealing a map to escape the brothel from Blue’s office. This may have sounded exciting on paper, but on screen this mirroring of two imaginary worlds doesn’t seem to have a point because during the majority of the film it fails to show the importance of the two imaginary worlds’ effects on Babydoll in the real world. By the time this is explained, which is at the very end of the film, it’s too late to regain interest in everything that occurred in the imaginary worlds. Everything was eye-candy and good-looking, but un-involving. Last year, ‘Inception‘ capitalized on this idea of different imaginary “dream” worlds, and dreams within dreams, and the film had more depth and involvement because during the entire film you knew that the actions taken place in the dream worlds are important, and that they affect the real world.
If director/co-writer Zack Snyder had put more focus on juggling the different worlds and making it more coherent, the film would have improved. The character development could have been improved, because all of the characters are essentially one-note. The cinematography and visual effects are definitely impressive, but in the end ‘Sucker Punch’ lacks a narrative or structural punch.
Two out of four Kents.
Extra Notes:
I’ve seen only three of Zack Snyder’s films, including ‘Sucker Punch’: I disliked ‘300’ and I liked ‘Watchmen’. The next film he’s helming is the Superman-reboot, ‘The Man of Steel’. After seeing ‘Sucker Punch’ I’m a little worried about this new Superman film being any good, but I have hope, especially because Christopher Nolan (Director of ‘Inception’, ‘The Dark Knight‘, ‘The Prestige’ & ‘Memento’) is producing, and David S. Goyer is writing the screenplay (‘The Dark Knight’).
