SUCKER PUNCH

It is rare these days that I go out to a multiplex and watch a new film in a cinema, but I decided to make an exception with Zack Snyder’s new film “Sucker Punch”.  In the film we follow Baby Doll (Emily Browning), who has been sent to an asylum after accidentally killing her younger sister while attempting to protect her from their abusive stepfather.

The asylum is run by Blue Jones (Oscar Isaac), who continues the cycle of abuse by selling the girl’s virginity to whoever will pay him the most, whom he refers to as the “high rollers”.  On the staff of the asylum is a Russian doctor, Dr. Vera Gorski (played by Carla Gugino), who teaches each of the girls an individual dance that they must learn.  These dances are what the high rollers use to determine which girl they want to spend the night with.  However, within the dance, Dr. Gorski, also tries to get the girls to lose themselves to another reality (in an attempt to escape the pain), to focus so hard on it, that they end up in another world where they are not powerless.

When Baby Doll is finally called upon to perform her dance, she succeeds in entering another reality, where she meets a strange old man (played by Scott Glenn) who gives her the plan on how to escape the asylum.  He tells her that she will need to go on five journeys and find something in each that will assist in the escape.  They include a map, fire, a knife and a key.  The fifth thing is a mystery.

After returning to reality, Baby Doll enlists the help of four other girls to help in the escape.  These girls are Amber (Jamie Chung), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), Rocket (Jenna Malone) and her elder sister Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish).  Initially the girls are unsure about trying to escape because they believe it to be an impossible task as “no-one has ever escaped the asylum before”.  Baby Doll ensures them that it will be fine and that it possesses no danger, because everyone will be watching her dance (yes, she’s that good), while the others steal the stuff they need.  Each time Baby Doll dances she, along with the rest of the group, enters a new reality (dressed in either schoolgirl or fetish outfits), where the girls must find the same thing they are looking for in the real world.  For example, when they are trying to get the map, they must also find a map in Baby Doll’s imagined world, which in this case is in WWI where they have to fight zombie German soldiers.

This is just a terrible movie, in fact it is worse than that, it is embarrassing.  This film just does not make any sense at all.  The main problem is the fact that the alternate realities seem to have no links to the real world what-so-ever.  What I mean by this is if these realities take place in Baby Doll’s mind, just what are the other girls doing in the real world while their adventures are going on.  I’ll give an example: when they are trying to get the map, it is up to Sweet Pea to sneak into Blue’s office and steal it while he is being distracted by the dancing of Baby Doll.  That’s fine, but Sweet Pea is still a part of the fantasy world fighting in the trenches, when in reality she is in a completely different room.  It doesn’t make sense and because of that you feel no tension when they are in the fantasy world because there are no consequences (in the real world) if they fail. This begs the question whether the other girls have knowledge of or experience the adventures that are going on in Baby Doll’s mind?  I’m not sure they do, and it is never explored or explained.

Another problem with “Sucker Punch” is Snyder’s terrible (and inappropriate) choices with his music.  Throughout the fantasy action sequences, pop songs are loudly played while the girls are performing whatever heroic acts that they are, but the music never seems to work with the images at all.  As much as I will give him props for using a Bjork song, it just didn’t gel with the samurai action that was being portrayed at the same time.  The problem with this is that it makes the songs themselves very noticeable, when their job is to actually complement the visuals, not over-power them.  Snyder really needs to study the work of both Scorsese and Tarantino, as these guys are both masters at taking pre-existing songs / music and adding it to scenes, and making it work so well that by the end of the scene you would be sure that the song was written exclusively for it.  

Unfortunately the actors do not fare much better, but to be fair, they had very little to work with, as the script is very poor.  Out of all the girls, I think the two Australians, Abbie Cornish and Emily Browning, come out of this film best, but compared to their previous work, their performances here are seriously below par.  I must admit that I am a fan of Oscar Isaac’s work (he was simply amazing in “Balibo”), but he does have the ability to go over-the-top at times (Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood”), which is definitely the case here, but he does it here in such a fun way that his performance as Blue is probably the only thing I enjoyed in “Sucker Punch”.  He may have been chewing the scenery, but at least he was entertaining.

What I keep hearing about the film is that it is “visually stunning”, but even on this level, the film fails miserably.  Personally I am sick to death of computer generated environments in movies these days.  Call me old fashioned but I actually prefer sets that have been built which actors can act around.  “Sucker Punch” looks exactly like the type of video games that are played today, and perhaps this idea would have worked better in that format, because it certainly doesn’t work as a film.  One of the biggest insults that I have heard, is that with this film Zack Snyder is becoming a “visual stylist” in the same class as Brian De Palma.  Excuse me?!?!?!  Sorry , but that statement is just ridiculous because he is not even close.  While I do appreciate him attempting a scene of “pure cinema” in the opening of “Sucker Punch”, I hate to say that it fell considerably short.  I want to point out that I am not one of these Zack Snyder bashers, because I have enjoyed his previous films that I have seen, it is just that this film needed a lot more work.

That is the main problem I think, because when I first heard him talking about this project a couple of years back, he was talking about how it was going to be a hard R-rated film, but as time went on, he decided it should be PG-13.  This isn’t a problem in of itself, but it was an indication that Snyder wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with the film, which is sadly representative of the final product.  Further evidence was that he shot the film almost like a musical with dance numbers throughout which he ultimately cut.  I just feel he needed to work out exactly what he wanted the story, and thus the movie, to be, before he went ahead and filmed it.  This feels like a first draft of an idea that has been fast-tracked into production.

Overall, to say that “Sucker Punch” was a disappointment would be just stating the obvious.  It is a film that does not work on any level, with whole scenes making little or no sense at all (I had no idea what they were doing on a train in one of the fantasy sequences), with a plot that is so simple that it borders on the ridiculous [The escape plan is so basic, are you really trying to tell me that no-one in that asylum had thought of it before].  I’ve read a few theories on the internet trying to explain the hidden depths of “Sucker Punch” (most seem to think that the whole story is from “Sweet Pea’s” point-of-view where Baby Doll doesn’t really exist, which actually makes some sense), and if these depths were what Snyder was really going for, it is a shame because they would have made the film infinitely better, but directorially he has failed in bringing these ideas to the screen.

To end on a positive note, I will say that Abbie Cornish looked absolutely gorgeous throughout the film and she is the main reason I am bumping my rating up to………

1 Star.

Oh, and good news, the blu-ray version of the film is going to be an extra 18 minutes longer, which will include darker material that had to be cut to get the PG-13 rating.  Hopefully some of this footage will make the film better to understand.