Sucker Punch

This is perhaps the easiest review I've ever had to write, simply because everything that works and doesn't work about Sucker Punch sticks out so obviously. I could tell you to watch the trailer or simply tell you it's a Zack Snyder movie, and you'd know almost exactly what to expect. But since I harbor the delusion that people read this blog for clever commentary, here goes.

Sucker Punch starts out like an elaborate music video, without a single word of dialogue until maybe 10 minutes in. It doesn't come close to the sheer brilliance that was Watchmen's opening, and everything is played out far too obviously with way too much intensity, yet on a purely sights and sounds level it's extremely effective. In this sequence Baby Doll (all the female leads are given stripper names, don't ask why) sees her mother pass away, as her evil step-father plans her and her sister's demise. After an incident that seems a little bit too dreamlike to be real, Baby Doll is sent to an asylum that's really just a front for a burlesque house (this movie raises a lot of baffling questions that are best left unasked.) For all its flaws, this sequence really showcases Snyder's ability to always make every shot as visually appealing as possible.

Then the second act begins, in which Baby Doll makes an uneasy alliance with four other girls in the asylum/brothel and a series of elaborate actions sequences occurs, all of them imaginary, vaguely paralleling what's going on in the real world. These scenes are the true highlights of the movie and probably the main reason anyone bought a ticket. They're fast, intense, imaginative, and everything else good action scenes should be, as the girls do battle with everything from WWI steampunk zombies to chaingun-wielding samurai, to robots, and even a dragon. In each case the CGI is first rate and isn't wasted on anything less than spectacular. If you're rolling your eyes at the thought of watching increasingly absurd action scenes with minimal context, then this movie will have no redeeming value for you.

The soundtrack is powerful and at times even chilling. It mostly sounds like a mix of Vangelis and The Gathering covering everything from the Eurythmics to the Pixies to Queen, and in each case it makes the song its own. Many are sure to find it too loud and too obvious, and they're not wrong. Nothing about Sucker Punch is subtle, and I'm sure some fans wouldn't have it any other way.

The acting is consistently forgettable, with most of the cast doing the bare minimum not to embarrass themselves. The only real standouts are Jena Malone and Abby Cornish as sisters Rocket and Sweet Pea, Oscar Isaac as the effectively smarmy director of the brothel/asylum, and my personal favorite, Scott Glenn as the wise man. Carla Gugino speaks in an obviously fake Russian accent the whole time, and I'm sure that plenty of people will cringe, but being Russian, the bad accents of the cold war era (especially in the Star Trek movies) have always been a guilty pleasure of mine. Of course most of the acting problems are due to mediocre dialogue and an inconsistent script. This movie is proof that Snyder is better off letting other people write his scripts. Fortunately, like 300, this is an action movie with the good sense to shut up when it has nothing smart to say.

In the third act the plan starts to go wrong, leading to an ambiguous ending that's hard to interpret. And the movie ends on a soft albeit somewhat touching note when I was most expecting it to go out with a bang. In short, there are a lot of things in Sucker Punch that are in need of serious improvement. At the same time, it's a relief to see a movie promise expertly crafted eye candy and deliver it in spades. If the term guilty pleasure ever had meaning, consider Sucker Punch a capital offender.

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