Film Reviews

Sucker Punch

• Rating:
• Director: Zack Snyder
• Starring: Emily Browning, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung, Carla Gugino, Jena Malone, Jon Hamm, Abbie Cornish, Scott Glenn
• Details: US/109mins 12A

I firmly believe that Zack Synder is a visionary filmmaker. Dawn of the Dead is one of the best remakes ever produced. 300, despite its flaws, had stunning action, while Watchmen will age better than most comic adaptations and is a truly underrated barrage of visceral style and layered, nihilistic substance. Sucker Punch is the first that he has (co-) written as well as helmed, and it's essentially the director indulging himself. It's predictably stunning to look at - as is its core cast - but it's rammed down your throat so violently and without coherence that most viewers will never be more than momentarily engaged. Emily Browning plays 'Baby Doll', a young woman we are introduced to just as her mother is been murdered by her step-father for financial gain. When trying to save her little sister from an attack from him, she inadvertently kills her and is thrown in the nut house. There, she meets a concoction of beautiful patients, and retreats into herself in order to concoct a plan to escape and deal with her traumatic experience - roping in her new friends to do the same. Snyder goes hell for leather from the opening frames of Sucker Punch. From the very start, he uses abrasive music and slick CGI-heavy action, only letting up occasionally to pan around Browning's beautiful face. When Baby Doll dances, she enters another world; somewhere very dangerous, but somewhere she's also capable of anything. The patients join her there, and they work together as a team. Those sequences are really beautifully done - one involving steam-powered Germans in particular is phenomenal. Snyder has a blast as the body count rises, and every one of his heroines is given a chance to shine. Plot-wise, however, is where this film really struggles. As it works on similar levels to Inception, comparisons with Chris Nolan's cerebral blockbuster are unavoidable. But where Nolan had just the right mixture of exposition, character and action, Synder doesn't really explain anything, instead hoping that audiences will be distracted by hot women in skimpy clothes doing really cool things with swords and shit in slow motion. When you have a plot built around something like that, those moments are cool - but when all you have are those moments, it quickly becomes repetitive. Basically, Sucker Punch doesn't really work. It's a mishmash of ideas in an extremely pretty package that soon becomes tiresome.

Review by Mike Sheridan