From the Archives: Sucker Punch'd

Posted Mar 27, 2011 8:19 pm

Movie Review



Sucker Punch is Zack’s Snyder first original film. He has already proved a master of adaptation, taking a Frank Miller story and making it socially acceptable for a mainstream audience (300). Then he blew that reputation out of the water by creating a near perfect conversion of Alan Moore’s Watchmen, a story long ago deemed “unfilmable” by studios and directors alike for the dark nature of the story and the deeply flawed nature of each and every character. Now he tests his original writing and directing chops on this dark and twisted tale about a girl escaping the horror of her imprisonment in a decrepit mental asylum.

Babydoll (Emily Browning) is horribly traumatized after the death of her mother and the murder of her sister at her stepfather’s hands. Now he wants Babydoll gone and is paying a corrupt worker at the mid-twentieth century asylum, Blue (Oscar Isaac), to schedule her for a lobotomy to keep her from talking. To deal with her dire situation, Babydoll retreats into her dreams and sublimates the horrors of her life. She reimagines the asylum as a brothel where the asylum residents are working girls working under their cruel pimp Blue. She enlists her fellow inmates, the sisters Rocket (Jena Malone) and Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish) as well as Blondie (Vanessa Anne Hudgens) and Amber (Jamie Chung), to break out before she’s silenced forever. Babydoll further retreats into a deeper level of a dreams in the particularly stressful situations during his preparations to escape and once more reimagines herself and the victims as badass action heroes armed to the teeth on dangerous missions. They battle dragons and steampunk Nazis, robots and stone samurai. As the film progresses the lines between reality and symbolism blur and you begin to wonder just what events are real and what the representations truly mean.

Obvious comparisons are going to be drawn to the recent blockbuster Inception, given their “dream within a dream” conceits, and yes, on the surface they do share similarities. But Inception is the epitome of Christopher Nolan’s style; masculine professionalism above emotion, or catastrophe results. Sucker Punch instead addresses the other, feminine side of the coin; dreams are used to try and deal with stressful emotions, and to empower oneself in a helpless situation.

Sucker Punch will undoubtedly face harsh accusations of misogyny, and it’s easy to see why, with gratuitous leather corsets, schoolgirl outfits, and a brothel dreamscape. However the movie quickly turns those concepts into the characters’ weapons instead of titillation. The classic fetishes are quickly called out as ludicrious and uncomfortable as the women are all mental patients. In the brothel, the girls turn the same qualities of subjugation and sexuality and use them against their captors to enact their plan through distraction and cunning. In the action sequences, the girls are confident and efficient (in bombastic fashion) against those standing in the way of their objectives. Furthermore, every male in the movie is flat and one note character easily defined (although special mention should be made to Scott Glenn as the Wise Man, channeling equal parts David Carradine and Leonard Nimoy), while the women, even the less characterized ones, are the ones who show complexity of character. Babydoll is a tiny fragile girl who dreams big to save herself, with Emily Browning acting dual roles of the quiet vulnerable girl and the action hero who fearlessly flies at dragons and giant samurai.



In respect to the cinematography, the movie continues Snyder’s cutting edge visual style. While in 300, the slow motion and highly stylized digital action comes across as over the top, but in Sucker Punch the surreal style feels right at home. The dreams and actions are fantastic and surreal, the mixing of steampunk, cyberpunk, and classic fantasy succeed where every conventional thought screams that they should fail. Scenes of dragons chasing WWII bombers and samurai with gattling guns push the borders of ludicrous into hilarious and fun territory. The soundtrack is equally stylized and surreal, although bordering on cliché at time (I’m looking at you White Rabbit). The wordless opening scenes overlaid with a haunting rendition of Sweet Dreams (sung by Emily Browning herself) set the stage quickly and powerfully. Highly synthesized beats and rock and roll introduce the over the top action sequences. Sights and sounds blend together to form a visual masterpiece of surrealism.

Not that the movie is perfect. Amber and Blondie both lack characterization and play second fiddle to Babydoll, Sweet Pea and Rocket. Jon Hamm is severely underutilized as The Doctor/High Roller. Additionally the narration near the beginning and end of the film both add little to a film that succeeded wonderfully in the “show don’t tell” style of storytelling otherwise.

In his first original work, Snyder has cemented himself into the ranks of modern filmmakers such as Tarantino, Rodriquez, Nolan, Whedon, and Wright who walk the thin line between insanity and genius in the stylized modern fiction film realms. These men demand that not only movies be visually beautiful and action-packed fun, but also well written with real, developed characters driving a story that grabs the audience. They are polarizing figures in modern film, alternately scorned and worshipped by critics and general public, but unarguably they drive the art form forward, beyond the conventions of the old guard of Hollywood.