Now Playing: Sucker Punch

Whoops.  Forgot to review Sucker Punch when I watched it a couple of weeks ago.  That should give you some idea of how excited I am about it.  Given Zack Snyder’s track record, I was absolutely expecting something beautiful.  And perhaps that’s where we should start – with the beautiful parts.  Visually, this movie is stunning.  I really loved the 300-esque feel that the entire movie had – gritty, stylised and vaguely sexy.  (We’ll talk more about the vague parts of this). Everybody and everything has a grimy sheen to it that achieves the amazing dual purposes of looking both appealing and revolting.  Except the girls.  They seem to shine and remain generally untouched by the ugliness surrounding them.  Could this be on purpose?  A commentary of the inherent innocence of these girls being locked up and being mistreated? 

Well, I doubt it.  Apart from the neat progression in time (samurai to medieval to WWI to some undisclosed planet with two moons) which somehow denotes Baby Doll’s evolution as a fighter (I think), and the pretty awesome soundtrack, most of the movie really confused me.  I mean, okay, I understand the brothel (and the subsequent escape from it) as some sort of metaphor for Baby Doll’s escape attempts from the asylum; but what was with the dancing-as-fighting thing?

Which brings me to the stuff I didn’t like – which, sadly, was the rest of it.  It all feels so contrived.  We need a victim escapist fantasy?  Let’s get an evil stepfather to lock our heroine into an asylum.  Need sexy outfits?  Well straitjackets won’t do, so let’s make the escapist fantasy take place in a brothel.  But how, oh, how can we get hookers (sorry, excuse me, dancers) into awesome fight scenes?  Well, we have to make the fighting a metaphor for the dancing (which is a metaphor for the asylum).  And heck, throw in a musical number at the end.

I almost wish I could have just watched this movie in mute and made up my own story. 

Well, so what to rate it?  It was pretty and the fight scenes were great; despite the exploitive feel, even the outfits were awesome.  But, in the end, I’m left unimpressed. I would say rent it, but that may compromise the visual effects; paying full price may compromise your wallet.  Your call.  2.5 out of 5 stars.