Zack Snyder’s latest film, Sucker Punch, does nothing to challenge perceptions of his work as being more flash than substance. It’s a barrage of videogame imagery, driving rock music and unyielding action sequences layered on a story as skimpy as the clothes that adorn the film’s female stars.
In Sucker Punch, an abused 20-year-old woman is framed for the death of her sister and institutionalised by her evil stepfather. Baby Doll (we never learn her real name) escapes into her imagination to cope with the dreadful reality of a world where she is to be lobotomised within a few days.
In her mind, Baby Doll and her fellow inmates are a troupe of sword-wielding, automatic weapon-toting Valkyries engaged in a series of battles with steam-powered German zombies, Terminator-like robots and gigantic mechanical samurai. That is, when they are not strippers in a bordello run by a vicious criminal.
The premise for Sucker Punch is completely bonkers, and the film had the potential to be a great deal of fun, if only it didn’t take itself so damn seriously. The real sucker punch of this film is that it thinks of itself as some sort of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest for geeks, rather than as a pure comic book fantasy.
It’s stuffed full of trite psychobabble, all delivered in tones as solemn as a reading from a holy scripture. “Who sends monsters to kill us and at the same time sings that we’ll never die? Who teaches us what’s real and how to laugh at lies?” ponders the narrator at one point, perhaps quoting from a volume of Vogon poetry.
Sorry, but you don’t get to have babes in mini-skirts, suspenders and fishnet stockings using machine guns to battle orcs and dragons if your film has any pretensions towards gravity. The tone-deaf script is just one of the many problems that this film suffers from.
Snyder — the director of Watchmen, 300 and the Dawn of the Dead remake — flounders in his attempt to bring his first original script to the screen. The pacing of the film is completely off — it’s both repetitive and incoherent.
Worst of all, the film never really manages to create a sense of consequence in any of its scenes, whether they play out in Baby Doll’s head or in reality. Some critics let Snyder off lightly by saying that it’s hard to make the events in an imaginary world seem important. Rubbish! Just look at how high the stakes are in the make-believe dimension of Pan’s Labyrinth.
At its best moments, Sucker Punch does have Snyder’s trademark visual flair going for it. When admirers describe Snyder as a stylish director, what they really mean is that he has a distinctive style. It’s more kitsch than class, but there’s something to be said for its individuality in a world of silkscreened action flicks.
As usual with a Snyder film, Sucker Punch is full of florid CGI imagery and slow-motion shots of bullet shells tumbling to the floor. The excess can occasionally become a little tiring, but the best parts of the film do have a touch of Gothic beauty to them. The visual design of the creepy mansion where Baby Doll grows up and the grimy Bedlam of the insane asylum stick out, in particular.
Sucker Punch trailer (via YouTube):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G68fHZig9nA
Baby Doll — as played by Emily Browning — is aptly named. Pigtailed, platinum blonde and flashing improbably long eyelashes, she’s as vacant as a lobotomised Barbie doll. Despite her ordeals — surely some of the nastiest a female character has endured at a director’s hands since Kill Bill — she simply doesn’t manage to engage any sympathy.
Some might call that objectification — reams have already been written about Sucker Punch’s gender politics. Truthfully, it is just lousy writing, acting and characterisation.
The supporting cast — including up-and-coming actresses Jena Malone and Abbie Cornish — doesn’t fare much better than Browning. Given the uniformly awful dialogue they’re given to work with, they’re not really to blame. There’s a cool role for the gruff Scott Glenn, though, as the mentor figure to the girls in the reality where they’re a foxy fighting force. — Lance Harris, TechCentral
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