Story:
Sucker Punch centers around a girl called Baby Doll (Emily Browning) who is wrongfully accused of murder and sent to an insane asylum by her stepfather. While there she enters into her own world in her mind, where she picture her surroundings to be a brothel instead of an institution. Along with four other girls she plans on escaping before she is lobotomized. While hatching her plot she and her friends enter another imaginary world where they fight in order to get what they need for their freedom.
Essentially it’s an Inception-esque story structure that…well, more on that further down.
(Note: There are some spoilers in this review, so if you want to see it cold, I suggest you wait until you see it until you read it)
Acting
There really isn’t too much to say about the acting in this movie. For the most part it was all okay, no one was either really great or downright terrible. The performances given were just enough to make the film believable given the material the actors were given to work with. One negative standout would be Carla Cugino who plays the head psychologist, the character is meant to be polish, so through the movie she was gives out a pretty typical eastern European accent that just feels pointless and out of place, given that the story takes place in Vermont. That could have been more due to the writing/directing but it was simply didn’t fit in with the rest of the movie.
Sound/Music
The overall sound design was good given all of the action sequences; it all fit in with what was going on in the film and never drew your attention from what was taking place on screen. The soundtrack was a mix of different psychedelic songs covered by different bands with orchestrated versions of them mixed in here and there. Overall there wasn’t much originality to the actual song choices, given that they were the same ones people always go to when they think about trippy stuff going on in someone’s mind. In particular White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane and Where is My Mind by The Pixies, so no real originality and as a result no real impression aside from some nice covers to go find on iTunes.
Visuals
In typical Zack Snyder fashion, there are a lot of green-screen effects here, for the most part it is passable, but otherwise there is nothing that makes it overall believable or noteworthy. Given that I saw it in IMAX, that is actual a negative, since that is where we are supposed to be blown away by what’s happening due to the high picture quality, not being able to accomplish any kind of impressive visual work for a film like this is just another disappointing feature this film carries with it.
Directing
This is Zack Snyder’s fifth film and in my opinion, it was also his weakest effort (note: have not seen Legend of the Guardians). Everything just feels so flat, whether the action, where they do that shoot from behind so you know its not the actual actor/actress even if you can’t see it, through to the acting. It just feels like it was mailed in, and given his previous works, that is sorely disappointing. Snyder is capable of doing so much more with a film than what is shown in Sucker Punch, it could have something to do with his script, but overall just a poor effort.
Writing (spoilerific section, so skip if you don’t want to know too much before seeing)
Where to begin…
There is so much wrong here that it ultimately kills the rest of the movie.
First off, the dialogue is choppy and oftentimes it is delivered in that way as well. There are moments throughout the movie where you can kind of see where it is getting at, which is attempting to introduce real conversations people would be having into the world of Baby Doll’s imagination, which is kind of neat. These moments happen so few and far between though that they can often go unnoticed or quickly forgotten.
There is also the wise old guardian (Scott Glenn) that pops up at the beginning of each action sequence to dictate the characters’ goals and some Zen-wisdom as well. Like, Snyder went to the big book of movie clichés to give the film some spiritual depth. It simply doesn’t work though, we have all seen it a hundred times and there is nothing to make it unique. There is a small part of the opening monologue about guardian angels coming in different forms to help us when we need it. Fine, you know what would’ve been cool? If every time this guardian showed up he wasn’t just dressed up in a different outfit uttering the same motivational crap as the last scene.
Then there is the story. I almost think Zack Snyder forgot he was writing a story that takes place in a women’s mental institution. We see it for about two minutes in the beginning of the film, and again at the end. I get the fact that the whole movie is supposed to take place in this Baby Doll’s mind, but it makes it really hard to empathize with anything that is going on when you cant tell if it is really happening or not. Then was the ending comes, we realize that things similar to what we saw were actually happening, but how are we supposed to know if you never take us out of the mind of the lead character to see it. Furthermore, there are a few times where conversations are being had with Baby Doll not present…how does she know what’s going on if she isn’t there? It all becomes speculation since she is apparently making it up in her head. A cool way to do it would have been to simply set the bulk of the film in the mental institution and the only time we got into Baby Doll’s mind would be for the action sequences. That would have made us feel for what is happening instead of being force to sit and look at all the pretty colors, wondering what’s going on and if it was real or not.
Which brings us to the ending.
Before the film got to this point, I would have said I was a little disappointed in it, but not necessarily call it a bad movie. Then they pulled a Brazil (Note: Brazil is a movie from the mid-80’s set in an Orwellian future directed by Terry Gilliam. It centers on a man who uses his imagination to escape the world around him. Similar to Sucker Punch). Out of nowhere, after over an hour and a half of the film in Baby Doll’s head, we are suddenly thrown back into reality where our main character has been lobotomized…screw you movie.
You don’t get to do that; you didn’t earn it over the two hour running time. That’s the emotional equivalent to having her wake up and realize it was all a freaking’ dream, and then you try to wrap it all up nice a neatly with everything sort of working out for an optimistic end. You even made a switch in main characters in order to do so. Who thought this was a good idea? Seriously, you cant just say in the last five minutes “Oh wait this isn’t my story. Its yours.” Then why did you waste our time in this girl’s head? If you were going to pull crap like that on us at least allude to it possibly happening, not just throwing it in at the last second. I don’t even know what you were trying to pull when you brought Scott Glenn back to do his thing one last time. Was that part even in the real world? Or was more inside Baby Doll’s head? Though not like it makes a difference since it apparently “isn’t her story”. Shame on you or you’re lazy writing.
Overall
The ending just killed Sucker Punch; I have never wanted to yell in the middle of a movie theater before. Had things been done differently I could have focused on some more of the positives, but ultimately this is one of the bigger let downs I’ve had at the movies in a long time. If you are really itching to see it, I say rent it and save a few bucks. Otherwise, skip it.
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