Sucker Punched

Sucker Punch (2011)
Starring: Emily Browning, Jenna Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, Scott Glenn
Directed By: Zack Snyder

Sucker Punch would have been an amazing video game. The action sequences are some of the best I have ever seen on the big screen, and I'm sure we'll see many imitators for the next few years. However, everything else about the movie is kind of....well, not a mess, but not as coherent as one would hope.

Zack Snyder's most recent film follows a girl known as Babydoll (Emily Browning), who is sent to an insane asylum for young girls after a horrific tragedy in her family. While in this institution, she fantasizes that the world she is in is actually a burlesque club inhabited by her fellow "patients".  She devises a plan to escape the club (which is actually the asylum) by obtaining four items : a map, fire, a knife, a key, and a mysterious fifth object. The way the girls can get these items is by Babydoll dancing for the "target" male who is in possession of one of these items. When Babydoll starts to sway, the scene shifts again, this time into one of the many fantastic action sequences in which the girls need to get the item.

While these action scenes are probably a little TOO literal, they are amazing. Snyder definitely pulled out all the stops for these scenes, and they do make the movie something to check out. But I was too interested in these worlds that he created for the fight scenes. By the time Babydoll, Sweat Pea, Rocket, Amber, and Blondie had fought off that dragon, I didn't want to be transported back to the burlesque house, I wanted to see more of that fight! Or more of the awesome steampunk zombie World War One soldiers. In fact, I think if Snyder had tried to make a narrative out of those scenes we would have possibly had a stronger movie, or one that at least flows a little better.

All of the girls involved are very good, but for some reason Rocket, played by Jenna Malone, and Blondie, aka Vanessa Hudgens, were the standouts for me. Malone really did the best out of the girls acting wise in my opinion, and Hudgens' action scene against those awesome WWI zombie things was my favorite part of the flick. Jon Hamm shows up as well, but unfortunately his scene is all too brief.

I've read a lot of reports online that Snyder had to make a lot of cuts to the movie before this was released, including cutting the much reported about musical numbers. But to be completely honest, maybe the movie would have flowed better with those scenes intact. While I was watching Sucker Punch, I couldn't shake the feeling that Warner Bros. had their hands all over it, and that Snyder relented to letting them water down his film for fear of losing Superman: The Man Of Steel. I believe we'll probably get a director's cut of the movie down the road that will prove (or disprove) some of these theories, but Sucker Punch was a lot of flash but not a lot of substance. The shifting of realities is pretty awkward, and I can't imagine that there aren't some scenes somewhere that help flesh this idea out. While I commend Snyder for creating something original, unfortunately it doesn't work quite as well as he wants. The action scenes are top notch, and at the very least I now know that Superman will at least hit something in his next movie, even if it is in slow motion.
3 Giant Stone Samurais Carrying Gattling Guns out of 5