Zack Snyder the visionary who brought us 300 and Watchmen brings us another spectacular visual feast called Sucker Punch. Sucker Punch is about a young woman whose mother dies and following this her step-dad tries to rape both her and her younger sister. She grabs a gun and shoots at her step-dad but the bullet misses and kills her sister. Fearing for his safety the step-dad puts the girl in a mental asylum and pays the owner, a man named Blue to have a lobotomy preformed on her in order to turn her into a vegetable so that she can’t tell anyone what really happened. At the asylum she is given the name Babydoll and meets a therapist who teaches the women in the facility to imagine the world the way they want to see it so that they can deal with their reality. In this fantasy the women are dancers, Babydoll is asked to dance and when she does she enters a fantasy where she is totally badass and she is tolled that if she can gather a map, fire, a knife, a key and a mystery item she will be able to escape. Babydoll turns out to be a magnificent dancer and recruits four other dancers to help her escape; Rocket, Sweet Pea, Amber and Blondie.
When Babydoll dances she captivates those watching which gives her friends the opportunity to steal the items they need. It’s in these scenes that Sucker Punch is at its best. When Babydoll dances the girls go to awesome worlds where they battle all kinds of cool enemies like giant samurais and dragons. The action is incredible and all of the women are just awesome, it’s really impressive that they manage to take beautiful women, have them use their sexuality to get what they want but still seem like strong women who can totally kick your ass. They literally take out hundreds of bad guys either by shooting them slicing them or just beating them down. The visual effects in Sucker Punch are wicked it is one of the most stylistic movies I have ever seen, there is just so many cool things happening in the movie and Zack Snyder’s direction is amazing keeping the action fast and intense at all time. Sucker Punch also has some fantastic music which is used to open and close each of their missions and really helps the build up for the new worlds they are entering and fits perfectly in every scene. The story doesn’t hold your hand which is a nice change they start using the different worlds really early without much explanation and force you to keep with everything going on. I wish they would have focused a little more on what Babydoll was going through, losing her mother and accidently killing her sister. They do show how it affects her in the beginning but when the girls are trying to gather the items they need to escape Babydoll just shuts out all of it and is more in control than some of her friends.
The acting in the movie is actually better than I thought it would be, I figured that it be just ok because the girls are being carried by the visuals in a lot of the scenes. However this isn’t the case all of the performances are good from the owner of the institute Blue played by Oscar Isaac who is a great villain, a real creep and I could actually hear people in the theater insulting him throughout the movie because he’s such a dick. Scott Glen is entertaining as the wise man who gives the girls their directions in each of the missions. Carla Gugino does a good job as the therapist who is conflicted because she wants to keep the ladies safe but has to listen to Blue. Jamie Chung and Vanessa Hudgens who play Amber and Blondie respectively, both give surprisingly good performances despite the fact that they have the smallest roles out of the Babydoll’s group. Emily Browning who plays Babydoll does a good job as lead she manages to seem focused strong and determined while still having that hint of fear beneath the surface. The real stand outs though are Jena Malone who plays Rocket and Abbie Cornish who plays Sweat Pea. Rocket and Sweat Pea are sisters who have been through a lot together, which leads to some terrific emotional performances on both of their parts.
Sucker Punch is an action packed thrill ride that you won’t soon forget. It has fantastic action, music and visuals along with a talented cast and an original story. The worlds are also heavily influenced by video games and are just incredible; it makes me wonder why we can’t get good video game movies. Its story may be a little thin however but this movie is still definitely worth checking out.
Score: 3/5
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