Sucker Punch was released a while back now and I’ve only just got around to writing a blog on it. Zack Snyder of Watchmen and 300 fame directed this so I was looking forward to it as he generally produces nice pieces of artistic creativeness if nothing else.
And that is pretty much what I got upon watching Sucker Punch. Its story is centred around a young girl named Baby Doll, who is oppressed by her step-father who simply wants the inheritance of her mother. He declares Baby Doll insane and she heads off to a mental institute.
Once in the asylum she meets the rest of the patients within. Namely: Sweet Pea, Rocket, Amber, and Blondie. The girls are trapped in this prison, the warden oppresses them further and uses them to make money himself. Their psychiatrist is Dr Vera Gorski.
In order to firstly put up with this harsh environment and secondly hatch an escape plot, Baby Doll simply uses her imagination to be free. She imagines a sort of dystopian Moulin Rouge environment where the girls are performers doing whatever is necessary to please the high-rolling guests.
The girls hatch an escape plan which involves stealing certain items that will help them do so. Chief instigator is Baby Doll who goes off into her own little world and meets Scott Glenn. The trailer amuses me quite a lot, as his acting in it is so horribly awful. “I‘m going to help you.” But in reality his acting wasn’t actually that bad, the trailer just made him look like an actor off Corrie.
Anyway, Scott Glenn tells Baby Doll of the five things she needs and she sets off, in her own world, to get them. These adventures are the best parts of the movie, they’re action packed, intense and visually impressive; whether it be fighting against zombie Nazis, or giant dragons they are all great and offer something different in each one. To be honest I’d be quite happy just watching them all back-to-back and cutting out the bits in-between.
It is the visuals and direction that are the biggest strong points of Sucker Punch. Although the story isn’t that great and the characters are just under-developed shells of what could have been, the visuals make up for it greatly. You’ll be hard pressed to find a better visual director than Zack Snyder, he really is the best at what he does; blows people like Michael Bay clean out of the water with his sheer creative scope. It's movies like this that prove that you really do not need to wear 3D glasses in order to be impressed by visuals.
Unfortunately though, once you look a little deeper than the visual effects, you don’t find much more. It’s quite shallow, the story is simple enough and does well to blur reality with imagination, something that isn’t usually done well in movies. However its simplicity is also its downfall with no real plot twists and a fairly A to B narrative.
As I said earlier, the characters don’t have much character about them. You find out little about any of them really, even the main character. They’re just there to provide a personality type: the great protector, the dim one with good intentions, the optimistic one etcetera etcetera. Well not just a personality types, they also provide the movie with hot girls, useful for selling cinema tickets these days. Sigh. It’s difficult to like any of the characters really, so you just accept it and enjoy the action. Whether they make it or not is irrelevant. I don’t think that’s quite what Snyder was after but that’s how I felt about it.
In the end, that’s what you should do when watching this one: just sit back and enjoy the action. Don’t expect anything extravagant story-wise, don’t expect to find deep thoughtful characters; it’s Zack Snyder, expect the best visual effects a cinema ticket can buy. That should be reason enough to watch and enjoy it.
And enjoy it I did.
Final verdict: 3 Stars. Visually stunning but lacks depth.
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