Review of Sucker Punch (2011) by Not A — 08 May 2014

What trash! An absolute train wreck with no redeemable qualities. The movie was painfully tragic to watch and the girls were average at best. I can not be fooled or swayed with a predominantly female, scantily clad cast.

The premise is very basic and could have been exceptional had it been in different hands. I truly believe this would have been a solid film under the direction of Alfonso Cauron (Harry Potter and Prisoner of Azkaban) or Guillermo Del Toro (Hellboy).

Sucker Punch director, Zack Snyder (300) has not yet learned how to make comic style films that resonate through story and character development just as it does through grandiose, state of the art visuals.

300 was a solid film but only from a visual standpoint. King Leonidas was awesome and well developed but the rest fell flat and over-compensated through its distracting comic book style. Sucker Punch did not even have the courtesy of having a well developed character, let alone a partially developed character.

The film begins with the films lead Baby Doll who's mother passes away and Baby Doll is burying her. Now apparently there has been previous animosity between Baby Doll and her stepfather because he locks her in a room after the funeral.

She breaks out with gun in tow and has the mind to kill him but has a change of heart. Not leaving well enough alone the stepfather takes Baby Doll to an Insane Asylum, where oddly not one inmate appears to be insane.

Mind you all the forementioned drama took place in the first five mintues. As soon as Baby Doll gets there she is assigned to a troupe of girls and she immediately starts to make her escape plans. No development into her past, no knowledge of what happens between her and her stepfather and no time taken to understand any motivation of any character.

Especially the main hospital attendant who calls himself the girls "protector". He for some reason makes them dance, but instead of dancing Baby Doll and her troupe are thrust into a fantasy world of oversized samurai warriors and clay statue Nazis.

I can only assume the dancing is a metaphor for breaking free from their confinement and it is manifested into an alternate world where large imposing creatures represent their captors and the martial arts used against their captors represents their unwillingness to comply.

I'm just speculating because there was no logic. Nothing is explained. Everything just happens. The whole cast cries and has emotional scenes as if the film is Schindler's List or Titanic but you never know why.

The main attendant is evil, girls are timid in the hospital but bad asses in fantasy world and this all adds up to an otherwise more pathetic conclusion.