Review

Review Date: 27-March-11
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Juicy

Sucker Punch (2011)

After building a name for himself with adaptations of graphic novels (300, Watchmen) and children's books (Legend of the Guardians), Zack Snyder has created his very own story to express his distinctive style. Sucker Punch looks like a comic book with scantily clad babes and exaggerated violence, but it stands out as a movie by the original scope of its imagery. After all, not many flicks feature young women hacking and shooting their way through dragons, robots, World War I zombies, and slavering orcs à la Lord of the Rings. Not many flicks have the keywords "lobotomy" and "beautiful woman" on the Internet Movie Database either.

The jumping-off point for these flights of fancy is a mental hospital which specializes in peeling paint, bare light bulbs, and battered or brain dead girls (that is, driving girls into these conditions). The heroine is deposited in this hell by her evil stepfather after a fatal domestic disagreement. She adopts the name "Baby Doll," a wholly suitable moniker for star Emily Browning, with her pale skin and succulent lips. Faced with cruel treatment from both doctors and a slimeball orderly (Oscar Isaac), Baby Doll retreats into an alternate universe in her mind. This place is not much better than the hospital, being a whorehouse where young women are enslaved to a slimeball pimp. (For erotic effect within the dream and on the screen, the women wear lingerie at all times, even when peeling potatoes.) Baby Doll populates this second hell with her new acquaintances, chief among whom are the tough yet frightened Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish, looking somehow stately) and her spunky little sister (Jena Malone).

From her new world Baby Doll envisions yet another alternate universe, which is where she and her friends — and Snyder's imagination — shine. In a snow-swept temple, a mythical gatekeeper (Scott Glenn) gives her weapons and a quest, the fulfillment of which will ensure her escape to freedom. Thus inspired, the women embark on a series of missions that involve battling all manner of creatures in fantastic landscapes and usually emerging victorious. These scenes are adrenalin-fueled escapism and a lot of fun to watch.

Of course, if Snyder really wanted to run with the girl-power thing, he should have thought up a different conclusion for Sucker Punch. As is, the movie suggests that the only recourse for women abused by men is to suck it up and find solace in fantasy. Baby Doll imagines this is true not only for herself and her friends, but also for the hospital's psychiatrist (Carla Gugino), who exists in the first-tier dream as another cowed whore and advises her girls to survive rather than overcome. This renders the movie's purported messages of "fight" and "create your own reality" cynically sarcastic. But one shouldn't read too much into Sucker Punch. It's too enjoyable to immerse yourself in Baby Doll's weird worlds during the first two thirds of the movie.

Copyright © 2011 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.