Sucker Punch review
To get something out right off the bat, I’ve really liked all of director Zach Snyder’s previous films. “Dawn of the Dead” was a surprising remake that stands on it’s own, “300” is one of the most visually influential action movies of the past decade and “Watchmen” is ambitious and flawed but still great in parts. Snyder is at the very least an incredibly strong visual filmmaker and the premise of “Sucker Punch” would allow him to go all out: a young girl institutionalized by her wicked stepfather retreats to an alternative reality as a coping strategy where she must fight Nazis, robots, zombies and dragons. The first film of Snyder’s not based on previously existing source material, this was clearly a chance for Snyder to get all of his fetishes out in one place. Even if the film was overstuffed with ideas, it would at least be provide for some very cool sequences.
But I was concerned about “Sucker Punch” from the first teaser. Because Snyder shoots such pretty pictures, he’s gone two for two with incredibly amazing trailers, but something about this one was off. Instead of thrilling, the film just looked like an expensive videogame. Tried to remain optimistic even when advance word was not great but unfortunately the film is a disaster. The story is as described but Snyder manages to suck all of the fun out of it by making a poorly written, ugly, uninvolving mess. There are no characters. The film opens with Baby Doll (Emily Browning) fighting her evil stepfather after he’s murdered her mother but does so like a stylized music video to a remix of the Eurythmics “Sweet Dreams.”
Unfortunately, this is all we really get to know about the lead in the film, as after this point her only motivation is to escape the mental hospital she’s placed in. And it’s all downhill from there. The other “characters” are capable actresses in tiny (but awesome) outfits unfortunately standing around with nothing to do. There are some horrible sequences of attempted emotion that completely fall flat as do the action sequences which are completely deadening and repetitive. There are no stakes, no consequences and nothing invested so each time the girls retreat into this fantasy world to fight fantastic creatures set to a remix of a familiar song, our brains switch to “sleep” mode because we don’t know anything about them or care.
The “symbolism” in the film just completely misses the mark. (“Ohhh, so the cook is the cook!”) There was a real opportunity for a Wizard of Oz retreat into these fantasy worlds but the film goes 2 levels deep (first level: we’re in a pretend brothel, second level: we’re in a pretend fantasy fighting world) without ever checking back into reality until the very end of the film. And the dialogue is bad. Scott Glenn (cast as David Carradine) gets the worst of it spouting nonsense cliche after cliche (“If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything”). The girls are game for anything but are let down by a story that gives them nothing to do. Snyder wanted to make a film about strong female characters but there is a sequence towards the end when literally every woman in the room is crying and the emotion completely falls flat, it’s embarassing.
“Sucker Punch” is an incredibly ambitious, even admirable failure, but the film absolutely does not work. It’s a juvenille, leaden disaster but hopefully now that Snyder has gotten this out of his system he can learn from his mistakes.
