“We are the attractions of the show” says one of the dancers, Rocket (Jena Malone), to the newly institutionalised girl nicknamed Baby Doll (Emily Browning). From then on it’s obvious that Sucker Punch is a typical Zack Snyder film, one that is pure eye candy for the viewers and nothing else. It has great special effects, great sound effects, great CGI enemies, great music, great camera shots, and great looking girls. But it does not have great performances, great characterisation, great direction, a great script, or a great story, all the factors that a film needs to actually work.
It can be a struggle to sit through Sucker Punch as a critic, or as anyone attempting to pay attention to the story. It’s about a girl who is institutionalised at a mental asylum by her crazy stepdad who believes she was responsible for the death of her sister. We see this in the opening scene which plays out like a music video. The rest of the film follows her trying to escape from the place by ‘unlocking her mind’. Or, in paraphrase, by envisioning a plan to escape from the harsh reality. The fantasy worlds in her imagination go from the past, to the future, to Japan. It’s funny how Zack Snyder chose to set Watchmen in the past and Sucker Punch to span over periods of time. It’s like he wanted his scantily clad female cast running around a lot. By doing that, he’s proved that a director can’t do his job with an erection over his cast.
The premise of this film was that it would be about unlocking potential or freedom. It’s simply freedom from a fantasy world, not a more intriguing theme such as freedom vs. predetermination. And when you can have Gatling guns, the ability to teleport and super jump, why would one want to liberate themselves from a fantasy world? Surely, any hostiles encountered wouldn’t be a problem with the weapons that the worlds could equip the person with. As for unlocking potential, it’s almost as if the girls are forced to do this by battling. The Wise Man who is met by Baby Doll in Japan (this is the lack of characterisation I speak about – how many Wise Men from Asia have we seen before?) always says some wise words before each fight that the girls get into, like “If you don’t stand for something, you won’t stand for anything”. That’s the point where it could be questioned why the girls are fighting – it’s either as a sacrifice or, like I said, they are being forced to do it, in order to show the fighting skills they’ve been blessed with. Pointless.
The upside of this film is watching it as an audience member that’s looking for a violent mess. It’s a film that can be watched by simply staring at the screen. Actively listening to the poor dialogue isn’t necessary. The rest of the film is incredibly loud but has an incredible soundtrack – the music is appropriate for each of the scenes, and the scenes with background music are played out like music videos and always involve heavy use of slow motion. The facial expressions that convey the characters’ emotions give a clearer picture of how they feel than the poor script. With its cool, stylistic effects, sexy girls, and CGI, Sucker Punch may be the tastiest eye candy of the year, beating Drive Angry and Battle: LA.
300 was powered by men, Watchmen was powered by mixed superheroes, and Sucker Punch is all about girl power. If guns, dragons, a crazy amount of CGI, and girls shooting robots that look like those from Killzone are what appeal to you, Sucker Punch is recommended. However the ‘wow’ factor is everything on screen, nothing that goes on inside the film – there aren’t any ‘wow’ moments during the fights, simply how the fights have been created make an audience go ‘wow’. And thanks to only having impressive technical aspects, when the eye candy has been swallowed after the first viewing, Sucker Punch is left with no replay value.
Anyone who pays for this hoping to see an action film that works will be Sucker Punch’d.
